Here’s a good idea for SparkFun to offer: buy a USB vendor ID and sell product-id’s at a reasonable price. Buying a VID without being a USB-IF member is $1500.00 and I’d gladly pay something like 50.00 for a block of PID’s (there are 0xFFFF PID’sfor each VID). You could sell an MSB’s worth of VIDs for 50.00 and make back your investment with only 30 sales (and still have 220 blocks of 255 PIDs left 
)
– pryankster
This is a great idea. I’ve thought about it also. Whether it’s workable depends on the whim of the USBIF, though; even if they don’t say they prohibit this they might prevent people from doing it. A while back a guy on sci.electronics did this with Ethernet MAC-layer IDs: he bought a manufacturer-ID from the IEEE (giving him 2^24 MAC addresses) in order to sell off subblocks to the many people who only need 1 or 10 addresses at a time. The IEEE got upset at him and convinced him to stop. The whole story is probably googlable.
Wow! That’s was an interesting stream of events. Nothing like getting threatened by the IEEE. Well then again, maybe it’s not that scary.
Any hoots - I like the idea. I’ll look into the specifics. Let’s see if I can get introuble with the USB world.
-Nathan
There is someone selling USB IDs already, in blocks of 10 and 100:
http://www.voti.nl/shop/p/USB-PID-10.html
He doesn’t seem to have gotten in trouble for it.
Wow, jasonharper, nice find!
Wouter (the guy selling PIDs above) is a member in good standing of the MIT PIClist. I followed the thread where he actually contacted the USB.org group and verified that it was indeed OK to resell PIDs.
So yes, he is doing it with their blessing (or at least their knowledge).
Sparky,
Any word on this? I am developing a USB flashing module for my product and will need a VID/PID soon.
Jamie
I noticed that on the CD for my new PIC KIT FS USB (18F series), there is a form to fill out to use one of Microchip’s PIDs.
The market is too specific/niche at the moment. Better go with the voti.nl guy.
-Nathan
Just my own unimportant personal preference, but I’d rather see sparkfun doing products / services that I can’t easily get elsewhere. Sparkfun doing USB VID/PIDs means sparkfun not doing some other cool thing.