Chicken And Egg; Licensing - FIGnition FUZE Hardware Reference Manual

core routines written in assembler and making use of a number of smart techniques to
achieve the required performance.

7.3.4 Chicken And Egg

If FIGnition uses V-USB to load its firmware, how was V-USB programmed into a FIGnition
in the first place? The answer is to use a different technique: an In-Circuit-System-
Programmer (ICSP) to program the bootloader.
FIGnition's ICSP was a home-brew programmer. After FIGnition was development it was
possible to use a FIGnition itself as an In-Circuit-System-Programmer to program new,
blank AVR chips complete with a firmware and a bootloader.

7.3.5 Licensing

USB is a data transfer protocol; a set of rules for transferring data over a medium, in this
case a shielded cable with differential +/- 3.6v signals.
In this sense it's like pen and paper or talking on a phone, except that you have to pay the
USB consortium for the right to choose what you want to say. V-USB too is licensed and
FIGnition is allowed to use it by kind permission from Objective Development, because it
changes nothing in the USB implementation, on condition that Objective Development is
credited.
Licensing limits the kind of data transfer FIGnition can support for free. It's not permissible
for FIGnition to transfer programs to and from serial RAM; to treat the serial Flash chip as
an external drive or provide serial-over-USB unless licensing fees are paid per FIGnition
sold and for the vendor (nichemachines) and device IDs themselves.