RE: Is is possible to receive a cheep SubVendorID?

[Dave New <NewD@esi.com>]

I have yet to see the SIG carry out the threat of re-issuing
an ID.  I imagine that they felt the the Vendor ID program would
be so wildly popular that they could conceiveably run out of
ID's (with only 65K available).  This has not come any near
to happening, so I don't think they will feel pressed to
re-issue IDs.

I would think that they have better things to do than to cause
a major interoperability headache for already deployed devices
in the field by re-issuing IDs.  There could perfectly valid
reasons for a member company to stop paying yearly dues.  The
most prevalent one would be that that company has gone out of
business, or been bought out by another company that already
has another active ID.  It doesn't make sense for either a
bankrupt company or a new parent company to continue paying
for IDs that are no longer being used to manufacture new
products.  On the other hand, it would be very bad karma
for the SIG to re-issue those IDs, for obvious reasons.

The conclusion is that the SIG is very unlikely to ever carry
out such a threat, and it is poor judgement on their part
to wave such a stick around that they could never use,
without alienating all the operating system vendors and
others that depend on a stable platform.

Cheers,

-- DaveN

-----Original Message-----
From: Theo Lindebaum [mailto:t.lindebaum@wavecom.ch]
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2000 6:00 AM
To: pci-sig@znyx.com
Subject: Re: Is is possible to receive a cheep SubVendorID?


Hi all,

I've been through the mill of finding out about obtaining a (Sub)vendorID
from PCI sig.  The $2500 when you only wish to have a registered VendorID
feels like extortion.  Even worse, is I queried what happens if we did not
continue our membership, and the reply was that if we did not continue our
membership, our Vendor ID could be re-issued to another company.

Now I know that PCI_SIG probably would not re-issue the VendorID, (this
could cause major headaches for the new "owner" of the duplicate VendorID).
But the threat was there.  It is the attitude of "you must pay your annual
PCI-SIG tax" that made us say "no way" to paying the price tag.  A once off
payment would certainly have been considered, even though the price was felt
to be high.

The price we now pay is that we cannot claim PC99 compliance (and whatever
other compliance that requires an implemented SubvendorID field).

>From my point of view, a service to allow one to register a VendorID for a
once-off (reasonable)fee would be most welcome.  One would expect to see
some set of rules in the issuing (and re-issuing) of VendorID's to prevent
possible "VendorID squatters" from becoming a reality.

Regards,
Theo