NMEA 2000 standard is gaining ground?

I raised a question about the rise of the NMEA 2000 standard on Google Groups and got some interesting (but technical) answers that might help you decide on whether or not to spend your time and/or money on this subject and related electronics…
Meindert Sprang: “My biggest problem is the cost involved. To get your first product on the market, you have to buy the standard documents and test suites and apply for a vendor- and product ID. This will cost $10,500 total, quite a hurdle for small manufacturers. My ‘all time favourite’ would be a marriage between NMEA-0813 and SeaTalk and some other features.
Joe Wood: “Therefore, my favorite solution is NMEA 0183 sentences, text readable ASCII and all, over IP multicast Class E addresses with some entity keeping track of an IP address registry. At 100BaseTX rates each device can put out whatever sentences it wants at whatever rate it wants and the consuming devices can simply subscribe to those multicast IPs it is interested in. Streaming video and all. The silicon is there; the software is there, too.”