The frequent fliers who flew too much

Re:The frequent fliers who flew too much by CamperBob2 on Sunday May 06, 2012 @08:10PM (#3936934)

Another example of this is USB vendor and product IDs. The USB standards body charges several thousand dollars for a 16-bit VID code; when you buy one of these, it comes with 16 additional bits of "address space" for your company's product IDs.

This makes sense for exactly nobody. Large companies are never even going to notice the $2000 that the USB consortium charges for a VID, and of course, not even the most massive international conglomerates are ever going to ship 65,536 different models of USB peripherals.

Meanwhile, the guy in the garage with an idea and a shoestring budget only needs one PID. But he either can't afford the $2000 or has much more immediate uses for it.

So an enterprising company in Holland immediately bought a single VID and started reselling the PIDs for about US $20 each. The USB Implemeters' Forum hit the roof, revoked the VID, and threatened to sue, but because their agreement didn't explicitly disallow PID resale, there was nothing they could do. It wasn't as if they could ever reassign that VID to any paying customer.

So I guess it's a good thing for the rest of us that large organizational gatekeepers are so often run by morons.

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Re:The frequent fliers who flew too much by qeorge on Sunday May 06, 2012 @10:18PM (#3937270)

Awesome story. Reminded me of this one from Derrick Sivers:

"In 1996, I had a little record label, so I got a UPC barcode account, so I could put unique UPC barcodes on my CDs. I had to pay $750 to the Universal Code Council to get a company account, but that meant I was allowed to create 100,000 products under my account. Musician friends asked how, so I showed them how, but also said they could use one of my product IDs.

At first, I did this for free, as a favor, until friends started sending strangers my way. Because it took a little work to generate the number, create their EPS/TIFF graphic barcode, and keep track of their unique IDs forever, I charged $20.

Over the next 12 years, this made me almost $2 million."

http://sivers.org/sharing

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Re:The frequent fliers who flew too much by daeken on Monday May 07, 2012 @02:21AM (#3937873)

I've actually considered this myself; invest $2k in it and get a large number of PIDs for my own purposes, and sell them off to others to recoup (some of) the costs. However, I think they've changed the rules on this for new licensees, right?

Which company does this? I may end up getting some from them.

Edit: Yep, they did indeed change it. Relevant text from the VID acquisition form:

> The USB Implementers Forum is the authority which assigns and maintains all USB Vendor ID Numbers. Each Vendor ID Number is assigned to one company for its sole and exclusive use, along with associated Product ID Numbers. They may not be sold, transferred, or used by others, directly or indirectly, except in special circumstances and then only upon prior written approval by USB-IF. Unauthorized use of assigned or unassigned USB Vendor ID Numbers and associated Product ID Numbers are strictly prohibited.

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Re:The frequent fliers who flew too much by CamperBob2 on Monday May 07, 2012 @03:53PM (#3940668)

The reseller I was talking about is http://www.mcselec.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&#... . I am not associated with MCS Electronics, but I've shipped hardware with a PID I purchased from them, and have been very satisfied.

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Re:The frequent fliers who flew too much by corin_ on Sunday May 06, 2012 @08:15PM (#3936943)

So the Dutch company was able to keep on selling?

Nice story, thanks.

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Re:The frequent fliers who flew too much by CamperBob2 on Sunday May 06, 2012 @10:13PM (#3937254)

Yes, to this day.

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