> > > (and cheaper--no I2C $$royalties$$).
> >
> > Royalties. What royalties - and when do you have to pay them?
>
> Don't worry... Although Philips own the I2C protocol and charge a
> license fee for its implementation in other manufacturers' chips,
> USERS of those chips don't have to pay.  Well, not directly, anyway.

True, but from what I've read the manufacturers of things like I2C-style
memory chips do have to pay royalties; personally, given a choice between
a 2-wire I2C memory chip and a 1- or 2-wire chip which worked as well but
was a nickel cheaper, I'd probably tend toward the latter for large jobs
(assuming it was reliably available) and I'd use whichever was more con-
venient for small ones.