https://www.automation.com/en-US/Articles/2019/machine-builders-unleashed-the-big-idea-of-open-st
Max.

 

I think it is a long-overdue idea. However, the attitude of Corporate Lawyers is totally against open-source software. Why? "Who are you going to sue when it fails!"

 

I think that like anything that is produced in a competitive field, products, developments etc are kept proprietary in order to eliminate plagiarism.
Max.

 

I took a tour of the Jacksonville FL Budweiser brewery with our ISA section back when they had just finished a huge capacity increase project that added ~50 huge fermentation tanks. The controls were like a cookie cutter for each tank. What amazed us was the software was programmed in C. Someone asked one of their young Project Engineers "wasn't it a HUGE programming job"? The answer left us dumbstruck. "No, you just go on the internet and look around and you can find all the pieces and then just paste them together." Nearly a Billion Dollar Project programmed by plagiarism!?!?

 

Posted C programming on various sites like Github have open source C that you can copy and paste and is not considered plagiarism. In most cases you still have to go and modify the program to suit your needs for the desired electronics and results. Copy paste just saves typing.

 

One very important feature is it retains the original concept of the PLC.

"This suite consists of two textual languages, Instruction List (IL) and Structured Text (ST), and two graphical languages, Ladder Diagram (LD) and Function Block Diagram (FBD). In addition",
Max.