^^ Bruce: I do admire your posts - they invariably add a different perspective to an otherwise very "techo" dialogue (not that you don't also do this). Anyhow, I'm always emboldened by your discourse to reply - hope you don't mind!!
So, without intending to demean your reference to the outstanding work of those mythical beings that work so diligently at RT's laboratories - isn't this exactly one of the purposes of forums like this?
Ive no doubt that the expensive and painstaking efforts from RT's employees (demigods, or troglodytes, I'm not sure which - perhaps both?) are the bed-rock for the success of RT's products. However, I would suspect that forums (like this) makes a contribution to the database that underpins 's position in the commercial space for diagnostic cables.
Of course it's difficult to apply a comparative metric for the community's contribution, or the role of each, but to my mind, forums (and not just RT's forum) provide a "distributed intelligence" - in contrast to the centralized facility at RT's HQ. Together, information from both makes-up the whole, I hope -I think
It's interesting (at least to me) to contemplate the identical commercial drivers between VAG and cable manufacturers: VAG tries to find more arcane ways to keep their IP in-house in the same way that cable manufacturers do the same (of course, in a manner that balances consumer rights and shareholder value). But, the only value that third party diagnostic tools provide to the buyer market is if parts of VAG's IP is in the public domain.
I guess the points of difference between VAG and cable manufacturers is in the definition of which bits of the car's design should legitimately be in the public domain. There can be no doubt that the secret/public interface is complex, but this is where the community (through forums like this) can/should make a contribution.
Not many of us have the RT's facility to find answers, but there are lots of examples on the web of innovative solutions that come from applying many-minds to a problem - I reckon!!
Don
Don