Too bad Agilent is ignoring a fair share of their customers. Also I don't appreciate being called a crybaby just because I made a valid but different choice. Why are you crying about crybabies?
I kind of see your point. In fact I do see your point. Are you in a position that you don't see free_electron's point? Seriously?
If you are a hobbyist or a professional, you want to get things done. Build a kit, test a device, fix something. Does it REALLY matter if you have to use an OS you might dislike to get that done? It shouldn't. Your primary concern should be to get the effin job done. Everything else is secondary.
The truth of the matter is that Windows makes development of software like this a lot easier than it would be to develop on other platforms. Agilent had something they needed to get done and they chose the tool they thought best suited the task at hand, and look at this, they succeeded.
I don't like that they only support Agilent hardware. C# and .NET in general is object oriented. They could have written an interface that I could have crafted a plugin for that supported the instruments that I have on my bench. But, no. Agilent management believes that if you have a choice you will choose non-Agilent hardware, so they find ways to remove choices and lock users into their products artificially with software like this.
If their hardware was the best, people would use it for everything, hobbyists included. Agilent, every other hardware vendor, too: let the freaking market decide and stop trying to fix the game with this vendor lock-in crap. It makes me hate you very quickly. It makes me believe your products are necessarily inferior BECAUSE you're trying to force people to choose you. It's weak, it's lame, it's short-sighted. Stop.
Yes, it was Agilent's effort that created the software. Why would they let anyone just piggy-back on that? For the same reason that Microsoft lets anyone write software for their operating system; it encourages adoption of the operating system. Allowing other vendors to offer plugins for BenchVue would encourage adoption of BenchVue. The greater the adoption of BenchVue, the greater mindshare that Agilent/Keysight will have in customers' minds.
I'm sure that Bill & Dave would have let end-users spend their own time to connect BenchVue to any GPIB hardware they had available because that's the kind of people I understand that they were. What happened to "If we don't innovate, someone else will do it for us?" I think John Deere said that, or something like it. He freaking innovated. He didn't lock anyone in to using only his attachments if you bought one of his plows. He stood behind his stuff and let the market decide. And now, John Deere is the #1 farming equipment manufacturer in the world, and they still don't require that you use Deere attachments on Deere tractors.
Lock-in is shortsighted and anti-competitive.
Hell, HP INVENTED HP-IB, and chose not to keep it proprietary. They opened it, standardized it, and called it GP-IB because they knew it would advance the trade. What happened to that attitude?
Ok I'm done ranting now.
... but I'm not done talking to Agilent
If Agilent opened this app to be usable by other test gear, they could identify any shortcomings of non-Agilent hardware when the user tried to do something that only Agilent gear can do, and alert the user to the functionality gap. "Sorry, but Device X doesn't support feature Y. Would you like to view known hardware that supports this feature? Yes button, No button, ask me later button, never ask again for this feature button." That's a freaking solid sales & marketing opportunity. By not supporting (or even allowing) non-Agilent gear you've cut those opportunities out. There would have been a hell of a lot of opportunities with that, too, because there is a LOT of hardware in the field that supports LXI, USB, or GP-IB that is not Agilent hardware. The user might not have even known about the missing feature(s) to begin with. Also, with this, you start to enlist employees within organizations to start asking for Agilent gear from within, while your normal sales and marketing do their usual job of approaching from without.
If you're fair, Agilent, and I've already established that you're not, you'd allow other vendors to show features that their own hardware has that other vendors' hardware does not, including Agilent.
Geez, the more I think about this, the more boneheaded it is that only Agilent gear is supported.