The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the organisation that oversees the USB standard, has apparently sent the director of a small British electronics firm away with a flea in his ear for daring to suggest how it could make the lives of open-source hardware developers easier and cheaper.
Arachnid Labs’ Nick Johnson decided that if the forum insisted every gadget that supports the universal bus must sport both a vendor ID number and a product ID number – an allocation for which the forum charges – he would seek partners to buy a vendor ID to share and use as a source of free product IDs for makers of open-source electronics.