Bill Tuthill <ca_creekin@yahoo.com> writes:

> Barry Twycross <barry@netbox.com> wrote:
> >> 
> >> And not becuase the PC industry inevitably picks the crappy product
> >> because it's a few cents cheaper?
> >
> > Its more than a few cents, its 25 cents.
> >
> > FireWire costs 25c a system to licence, USB is a flat fee of $1500
> > (possibly for ever) or maybe $2600 a year.
> 
> Who collects the 25c royalty?  I thought Firewire had become a standard,
> IEEE 1394, which appears to be available on Linux (www.linux1394.org)
> for free or perhaps with copyleft, I dunno.
> 
> Why can't the PC vendors reimplement it as did the Linux community?

This would be hardware licencing by the people (Apple, presumably) who
ensure that people making firewire implementations can actuallly talk to
one another. Precisely what doesn't happen with USB.

B>