pid.codes

How to get a PID code

0. Prerequisites

If your project does not meet the following criteria, your pull request will be rejected:

  • Publicly available source code repository…
  • Containing schematics or source code for a device with a USB interface…
  • Licensed under a recognized open source or open source hardware license. Your source code repository must contain a LICENSE file attesting to this fact.

If your project involves both hardware and software, both need to be licensed under recognised OSS and OSHW licenses. If your project involves only one or the other, we may ask for further justification as to why you need a PID associated with your software project / development board instead of allowing end-users to request their own.

If your project doesn’t yet meet these requirements, please hold off requesting a PID until it does. Don’t worry, we’re not likely to run out of PIDs soon.

1. Fork us

Create a fork of our repository on GitHub.

2. Set up your organisation page

Create a directory named after your organisation in the org directory. The directory has to be named with no spaces.
Create a file inside it called index.md and add the following content:

---
layout: org
title: My organisation
site: http://www.myorg.org/
---
A short description of my organisation and what it does.

If it’s just you, that’s fine too - put your own name and a short blurb about you and what you do. The site is an optional website for your organisation.

3. Find a VID and PID

Browse the list of PIDs for an unused PID number. You may request any number that is not in use, except those reserved (0xxx and 1xxx) as described on the PID list page.

When you’ve found a PID, create a directory named after it in the VID directory. So, if you picked PID 2345 on VID 1209, create a directory with the path /1209/2345/. Inside it, create a file called index.md and add the following content:

---
layout: pid
title: My device name
owner: myorg
license: MIT
site: http://www.mysite.com/
source: http://github.com/myorg/mydevice/
---
A short description of my device and what it does.

The title field is what will appear on the pid.codes directory. Titles will be prefixed with the name of your organisation, so don’t include that in the title. Try and pick a name you’d want to see in Device Manager or dmesg.

For the owner field, specify the name of the directory you created for your organisation in step 2. For license, you must name a valid open-source license; pull requests that do not have this field filled out correctly will be rejected.

The site field should point to the most relevant URL about your project. The source field must point to a URL at which users can find the source code for your device; this includes both PCB designs and firmware. This does not have to be on GitHub. The two URLs can be the same.

Under the second triple-dashed line, you should write a short description of your project including what hardware and software it uses.

4. Send us a pull request

Commit your changes to your fork of the repository with a descriptive commit message, and send us a pull request. Pull requests will only be accepted if they follow the rules laid out for the VID you are requesting a PID under. If this is not your first PID, or you’re requesting multiple PIDs, we may ask for more details and justification. Once we accept your pull request, your registration will go live and appear on pid.codes.