US patent 5473599

Tue May 6 15:19:12 UTC 2014

On Apr 26, 2014, at 1:55 PM, Nick Hilliard <nick at foobar.org> wrote:

> 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?

Sorry this is late…

Might I suggest an even simpler and cheaper solution?  Cisco has widely and repeatedly claimed that they will only use their patents defensively.  Why not have someone on behalf of *BSD simply write them a letter/email requesting a royalty-free license to the patent for use in *BSD?  Play up the non-profit and non-competitive angles.  If they agree, then you can freely implement HSRP or VRRP directly.  If they refuse, then you’re no worse off than you were before.

The guy with his name on the patent,
Tony