I kind of disagree with you on the who says what part. The guys who have been part of the class, and the guys with no agenda at all, are the ones who will stay involved with almost no little current prejudice.
And how are you doing Bruce. Needlepoint you say?????? How'd you survive the storm?
The biggest issue I have seen that seems to cause problems, isn't the rules so much as the lack of enforcement of whatever rules are there. There seems to be two reasons. 1. It's someone's friend or a major contributor. Or 2. it's too hard to enforce the rules that are in place. The motor has to be torn down etc....
I do believe however, the Merc program to read the ecm brain is available to any Merc certified dealer/technition. And I think it is a simple plugin-printout of max rpm, volts, fuel, etc. I'll do some more checking. I also believe Steve said that same type of system was available for his Vortec ignition in Sunprint.