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Same with USB consortium. Gotta pay like $10k to get a USB vendor ID. What the fuck were these people thinking to rally up behind this draconian standard? There

Same with USB consortium. Gotta pay like $10k to get a USB vendor ID. What the fuck were these people thinking to rally up behind this draconian standard? There is a limit to how many vendors they can have, iirc 10k. But for all the issues with it, usb seems to work on devices without Bluetooth-like issues. Standards should be open and free for common public and only have to pay once you reach certain company size. Things like ISO standards aren’t free.

blibble 4y ago
vendor id is 16-bit so should be enough for 65535 of them
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  Yea a bunch of these are reserved. I remember jumping through the whole process when we were designing a usb device. To counter my own point, it takes money and people to run a standards committee and it is important to keep in mind that funding has to come from somewhere. Here are more details of what it takes to run one: https://stackoverflow.com/a/22968431/3908009 https://stackoverflow.com/a/22968431/3908009 IMO they should either be funded by gov or by large companies.
  - blibble 4y ago
    yes, $4k/year doesn't seem that bad for a company that's going to be producing a commercial product (and of course if you're just hacking locally you can do whatever you want as it's an open standard)
- lupire 4y ago
  Can you sublet a vendor id, like a taxi medallion?
- madacol 4y ago
  Maybe in next versions they should choose 256 bits (or 160, like bitcoin) which would be the hash of a public key, an any vendor that provides a valid signature, can claim that 160 bit vendor ID. No more need for a central authority I'm probably overengineering it, just pointing out it is technically possible
  - lttlrck 4y ago
    There is no obvious reason why USB couldn't have used used Ethernet MAC vendor Id, aside from politics. Instead there could be a single registry like IANA.
jfim 4y ago
10k is a negligible amount for a device manufacturer. You'd be surprised at how expensive it is to manufacture things. A plastic injection mold to make plastic parts can be in the five figures, for example.

blibble 4y ago

vendor id is 16-bit so should be enough for 65535 of them

systemvoltage 4y ago
Yea a bunch of these are reserved. I remember jumping through the whole process when we were designing a usb device. To counter my own point, it takes money and people to run a standards committee and it is important to keep in mind that funding has to come from somewhere. Here are more details of what it takes to run one: https://stackoverflow.com/a/22968431/3908009 https://stackoverflow.com/a/22968431/3908009 IMO they should either be funded by gov or by large companies.
- blibble 4y ago
  yes, $4k/year doesn't seem that bad for a company that's going to be producing a commercial product (and of course if you're just hacking locally you can do whatever you want as it's an open standard)
lupire 4y ago
Can you sublet a vendor id, like a taxi medallion?
madacol 4y ago
Maybe in next versions they should choose 256 bits (or 160, like bitcoin) which would be the hash of a public key, an any vendor that provides a valid signature, can claim that 160 bit vendor ID. No more need for a central authority I'm probably overengineering it, just pointing out it is technically possible
- lttlrck 4y ago
  There is no obvious reason why USB couldn't have used used Ethernet MAC vendor Id, aside from politics. Instead there could be a single registry like IANA.

jfim 4y ago

10k is a negligible amount for a device manufacturer. You'd be surprised at how expensive it is to manufacture things. A plastic injection mold to make plastic parts can be in the five figures, for example.