USB Implementers Forum Won't Play Nice With Open Hardware

DeathToBill writes "Hack A Day reports on the attempts of open hardware hackers to obtain a vendor and product ID for their devices to be able to sell them as USB compliant: 'A not for profit foundation [in this case Arachnid Labs] could buy a VID, give PIDs away to foundation members making open source hardware, and we would all live in a magical world of homebrew devices that are certified as USB compliant.' The USB Implementers Forum, which controls the sale of PIDs, has lawyered up, responding to the effort with a cease and desist notice, requiring Arachnid Labs to stop 'raising funds to purchase a unique USB VID' and 'delete all references to the USB-IF, VIDs and PIDs for transfer, resale or sublicense from your website and other marketing materials.' A slight over-reaction? Or dark conspiracy against open hardware? You decide!"

Comments

Pardon my ignorance but...

[Thanshin]

What does it imply not being certified as USB compliant?

If you have USB and people use it and it works and reviewers use it and just say "it has USB"...

What I mean is: Is it forbidden by law to say "It's got USB" if it's not certified as USB compliant?

Re:Pardon my ignorance but...

[Moryath]

Well that's often how standards work.

Consider how VHS beat Beta (aside from the "having Porn" aspect). Consider how many of Sony's other proprietary formats failed to take off because a cheaper, "technically inferior" alternative exists. DAT, MiniDisc, "Sony Dynamic Digital Sound", ATRAC, HiFD... the world is uncompromising.

Consider how Iomega beat the pants off of SyQuest (Zip drives vs EZ135), despite being slower, lower capacity, and prone to the media itself dying in a way that would actually destroy the drive (click of death). How did they do this? By getting Gateway and Dell to pack in Zip drives on a ton of computers for about 5 years and then selling the media everywhere.

And then Iomega tried for the Jaz drives, and competed with Castlewood's Orb drives, and both of them got smacked around by people going "hey you idiots, we can burn DVDs now."

Consider how Blu-Ray has settled into the niche, high-end "I have a 800-inch TV and 13-point surround sound" video/audiophile nerd zone, while DVD still kicks its butt by being available to anyone who can scrape together $20 for a player, $20 for a tv of any sort (even an old CRT still works w/ it), and $5-10 a month for a Netflix subscription or some cheap movies from the local grocery store or walmart's bargain bin.

Consider how the Atari 5200 couldn't manage to get buyers and was whomped by the Atari 2600. How the NES, woefully inferior to the Sega Genesis, nevertheless completely beat it in sales for two whole years before Nintendo finally got around to releasing the SNES (Genesis released 1989, SNES released 1991). How the supposedly "technically superior" PSP line have been a constant source of jokes and derision while Nintendo laughs their ass to the bank re-releasing old games on Gameboy/DS/3DS hardware that is, in terms of technical limitations, less powerful than an old Playstation and makes the games look more than a decade old.

Look how hard Apple tried to push Firewire only to have nobody else want it. Look how hard they're now trying to push Thunderbolt, which they can only sell to people who by an Apple laptop or desktop machine. Thunderbolt is headed the way of Firewire, fast.

It does you no good to be "technically superior" if you can't get your product into people's hands. History is littered with "technically superior" crap that nobody adopted.

Re:Pardon my ignorance but...

[TheGratefulNet]

slightly OT, but one great use of the firewire cable is inter-box i2c cabling.

when I build hardware projects that run i2c between boxes, I use firewire pc connect tabs (like you'd see on the back of a pc, where the pci cards would be) but just without the tab and keeping the bulk-head style mount of the firewire jack and cabling. 2 of them, one on each box (for me, they are DIY audio boxes) and then a bog-standard I-dont-have-to-make-it-myself firewire cable to connect them. building cables and having a strong strain relief is hard for DIYers but using factory made cables is a huge benefit and cost-savings.

FW has 2 shielded signals (I use them for i2c clock and i2c data) and then has 2 beefy power wires, which I use to ship 5v across boxes so that the 'remote' box doesn't even need a local 5v psu. at the highest i2c speed, this cable is robust enough and exceeds the i2c specs in terms of crosstalk between clock/data (they are both shielded coax) and you can get short or long FW cables.

I've never seen anyone do this before but its a handy DIY trick. and even if you do plug this cable into a pc, by mistake, you still are using the 5v wire for 5v and gnd for gnd, so no harm should be done. it won't 'init', but no damage happens.

(end diy-CSB)