Re: US patent 5473599

[Nick Hilliard <nick () foobar org>]

On 23/04/2014 17:47, Henning Brauer wrote:
> fortunately this obviously isn't a big problem in practice, based on
> the fact that we don't get any complaints/reports in that direction.
> still would be way micer if that situation had been created in the
> first place, but as said - we weren't given that choice.

the situation was created by the openbsd team, not the ieee, the ietf or
iana.  You squatted on an existing oui assignment used by an equivalent
protocol and in doing this, you created a long term problem with no
possible solution other than to change carp to use its own dedicated range
instead of someone else's.

You had every choice in the world about what range to use and even if you
didn't have the $2500 at the time to register a perpetual OUI assignment,
almost any other OUI in existence would have been less detrimental to users
than the one you chose.

The openbsd foundation raised $153,000 this year.  Why not invest $2500 of
this and fix the problem?

Nick