81–90 of 100 posts
http://www.mcselec.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&f...
MCS is in Holland, where both their jurisdiction and the fact that they licensed their VID from USB-IF a long time ago make it impossible to enforce the prohibition against reselling PIDs. For EU 10 each, it's worth it just to kick sand in the face of the asshats at USB-IF.
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The way these things normally work is that you're only allowed to use the name and marks if you're an official licensee. So if you put the USB logo on your marketing and claim to have a "USB Mini" connector in your specifications then you could be in trouble on two fronts: (1) the usb folks can sue you for using their IP and (2) purchasers can claim the product is not "as described" which may given them certain right…
Then market it. SUSB - SuperUSB. Who wouldn't buy something that's the-same-but-Super?
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Thanks a lot! What if more than 64K people have asked for a PID?
They'd just buy up another VID, the names associated with VIDs don't need to be unique.
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I like this idea. If there's some benefactor to the Open Source community (or even if they pass along a collection) for the VID, that could even work. They just need to properly implement the standard and the VID can effectively be the Hoover or Kleenex of VIDs. Edit: On second thought (after I actually read it), this bit... Please immediately cease and desist raising funds to purchase a unique USB VID for the purpos…
An argument I would make if I we t to court fighting that is that such squatting dilutes the 'USB' brand. Imagine a world where this 'open' approach gains market share. For the consumer, the net result easily could be that USB, which now is highly plug and play, becomes more like the way ISA cards used to be plug and play: you can plug in any device, but to make it work, you need to do some voodoo (oops, there's more…
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> Legendarily it was HP (or was it sun?) who shipped a whole batch of ethernet cards accidentally in the 90s with the same MAC address, boy was that a nightmare to figure out the hard way. Sun used to use the same MAC address on each port of their QFE (quad fast Ethernet) cards. It was easy to fix with ifconfig, but always made me wonder two things: a) if I number these ports sequentially (:a, :b, ...) am I going to…
That's because the MAC address is stored in system ROM on the motherboard, not in the NIC, iirc. The theory was 1) the ports would be used on different network segments, hence no problem and 2) storing the MAC in the motherboard meant you could swap NICs without updating all your DHCP/whatever config files.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way these things normally work is that you're only allowed to use the name and marks if you're an official licensee. So if you put the USB logo on your marketing and claim to have a "USB Mini" connector in your specifications then you could be in trouble on two fronts: (1) the usb folks can sue you for using their IP and (2) purchasers can claim the product is not "as described" which may given them certain right…
Then market it. SUSB - SuperUSB. Who wouldn't buy something that's the-same-but-Super?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way these things normally work is that you're only allowed to use the name and marks if you're an official licensee. So if you put the USB logo on your marketing and claim to have a "USB Mini" connector in your specifications then you could be in trouble on two fronts: (1) the usb folks can sue you for using their IP and (2) purchasers can claim the product is not "as described" which may given them certain right…
At this point, I doubt that certification matters for many applications, particularly in the consumer sector. "Connects to your computer at speeds up to five gigabits per second using industry standard USB cable," probably covers everything short of a the edge cases such as government procurement contracts.
V-USB for AVR gives you 2 VID/PID pairs for 500 Euro. http://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/license.html
There's also a 10EUR hobby package which gives you a pair for personal use only.
FUP applies, but if you're breaking it then really you should go legit and pay the USB feds their protection money.
How are these guys getting round it?
It looks like not enough people know that you can license individual PIDs from MCS Electronics: http://www.mcselec.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&f... MCS is in Holland, where both their jurisdiction and the fact that they licensed their VID from USB-IF a long time ago make it impossible to enforce the prohibition against reselling PIDs. For EU 10 each, it's worth it just to kick sand in the face of the assh…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like this idea. If there's some benefactor to the Open Source community (or even if they pass along a collection) for the VID, that could even work. They just need to properly implement the standard and the VID can effectively be the Hoover or Kleenex of VIDs. Edit: On second thought (after I actually read it), this bit... Please immediately cease and desist raising funds to purchase a unique USB VID for the purpos…
An argument I would make if I we t to court fighting that is that such squatting dilutes the 'USB' brand. Imagine a world where this 'open' approach gains market share. For the consumer, the net result easily could be that USB, which now is highly plug and play, becomes more like the way ISA cards used to be plug and play: you can plug in any device, but to make it work, you need to do some voodoo (oops, there's more…
For the record, this already is pretty common. Lots of keyboards mimic Apple's VID/PID, and tons of controllers use absolutely nonsense VIDs/PIDs (GameStop's mobile controller line, for example).
Why not use this cease and desist letter to file a RICO Act claim against them? If they can't responsibly offer their product without revoking it for simply using it as intended, they are racketeers. The Open Source community has not broken any legal agreements in simply publicizing the idea of a shared VID. The USB Forum are completely in the wrong for their behavior.