[USB]
And the proliferation of unofficial VID and PIDs seems to be an
issue, [...]
Well, given the difficulty of getting official values (USD 4k, per
year(!), seems to be the cheapest option at the moment - certainly
completely out of reach for anything hobbyist), this is hardly
surprising.
Of course, that's not entirely unreasonable given the tiny space. But,
also, it is entirely predictable; I don't know what the USB designers
were on when they either failed to predict it or ignored the problem.
I suspect they were trying to lock out the small fry; how they failed
to realize that any kind of enforcement is utterly impractical I have
no idea. (The sane thing to do would have been to make the space large
enough that IDs could be handed out freely...128 bits, say.)
I recall seeing some organization that had a vendor ID inherited from a
company that had it assigned before the license agreement made them
non-perpetual and non-transferrable, and was handing out device IDs,
but my search-fu is too weak to find it now (if indeed it still
exists).
Really, it's a mess.
I concur.
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