http://forums.leaflabs.com/topic.php?id=1781 A place to share, learn, and grow... en-US Fri, 22 Jan 2016 00:16:16 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 q http://forums.leaflabs.com/search.php http://forums.leaflabs.com/topic.php?id=1781#post-10819 Tue, 22 May 2012 21:03:21 +0000 bnewbold 10819@http://forums.leaflabs.com/ <p>See: <a href="http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/USB_Product_IDs" rel="nofollow">http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/USB_Product_IDs</a></p> <p>This is really great news, an issue i've been agitating about for a while now. The current system "requires" companies to pay in $2000+ to get a legit vendor id block of 65536 product ids, even if only a handful of product ids are needed. Some chip vendors help out (I think you can get msp430 IDs for free if you ask nicely), but there hasn't been a systematic way for small (for-profit or non-profit) projects to get a legit ID.</p> <p>They are also making ethernet MAC addresses available.</p> <p>I hope in the future these blocks can be turned over to a group like the Open Hardware Association to be maintained in the long run. It's a sham and a shame that these industry groups are always structured around setting up these artificial financial barriers to entry; surely reasonable administrative overhead costs ($120k a year?) could be covered by donations from larger companies or a government/foundation grant. See also recent efforts to publish expensive copyrighted standards on the (ethical) grounds that they are effectively a subset of US federal law. </p>