Hector Martin

If USB-IF stopped rolling forward old versions it would happen much less. But their members want the confusion. They want to be able to slap the latest version number on old hardware. This isn't unique to USB, but it's the offender with the most reach.

I guess what I'm really saying is that this isn't news. Maybe versions should've been hard-tied to speeds. But they never were, still aren't, and 3.1 and 3.2 aren't really doing anything differently. And I doubt USB-IF will switch gears now.

It was only introduced wth 3.1. 3.0 didn't rebrand 2.0 ports, nor did 2.0 rebrand 1.1 ports.

Not ports, but yes devices! 2.0 devices can be low-speed, as I just demonstrated with my mouse (and the 2003 Ars article). 3.1 and 3.2 don't rebrand ports either; nobody is going to call a port that can't do Gen2 "3.1".

That's exactly what they do.

And if you're a hardware vendor trying to make your old gear more appealing, why wouldn't you? It is a 3.1 port! Just only capable of generation 1 speeds...

But they could already do this with 2.0... it's literally the same exact situation.

No it couldn't. A 2.0 port is not any generation of 3.0.