Hi everyone! I'm a long time lurker and this is my first post.
Lately I've been interested in making some usb devices and I've come upon something interesting:
USB Vendor and Product ID numbers(VID's and PID's) help operating systems quickly assign the correct drivers to a usb device. To avoid conflicting ID's, the USB Implementers Forum(USB-IF) regulates VID's. For this service they charge expensive and recurring fees:
Link.
Nick Johnson, of Arachnid Labs, wrote an interesting article about potentially sub-leasing VID's:
Link. Unfortunately, it seems that USB-IF adamantly forbids this.
They
do have free VID's for prototypes that must never be sold. However, I believe this is still an issue for anyone who wants to sell usb devices in small runs or for any OSHW projects since the right for others to sell your hardware design exists.
So how can OSHW designers make legal and usb-compliant devices without emptying their wallets?
One solution might be to use a usb-compliant component in your design like those made by FTDI. I'm not sure whether this makes your entire design technically usb-compliant though.
Another solution might be to ignore USB-IF and sub-licence someone else's ID's anyways. From the V-USB documentation:
A 16 bit integer number cannot be protected by copyright laws. It is not sufficiently complex. And since none of the parties involved entered into the USB-IF Trademark License Agreement, we are not bound by this agreement. So there is no reason why it should be illegal to sub-license USB-IDs.
Lastly, maybe one might ignore USB-IF and pick a random VID/PID pair. Since each is 16-bits long, perhaps the odds of a conflict are remote anyways.
I'd love to hear other people's ideas and opinions on this issue.