Posted by: [email protected]
Yeah I'm mostly just being pedantic. I'd call them different designs. At least Sram open sourced XD, I'd be willing to concede in that case and call it an open standard. AFAIK Microspline is still proprietary and must be licensed from Shimano.
This was somewhat of a baffling move by Shimano as it effectively put fewer of their new drivetrains on bikes for the first year of MS. The fact that they (their lawyers, I assume?) even referred to a spline configuration as proprietary is sort of odd. I mean, if it was patented they would have said that specifically, (and good luck enforcing that patent!) Maybe it was more of a copyright/nomenclature issue which would make “many splinies” freehubs harder to move for manufacturers if they weren’t allowed to actually call them “micro spline”? I know at least one manufacturer built MS compatible freehubs using half the splines before they were given a license.
Even putting aside this lockring stripping tendency on MS, the 10t install is a bit of a bodge. Mating with the 12t instead of the actual splines is annoying. It’s a little better than XD in terms of being able to reorder cogs and use a cheaper stacked cassette. Would there be less spline deformation on MS compared to HG with the additional spline area when using a stamped cog? Maybe, but whether Shimano will “license” anyone to build such a product is an open question.
In the interim, I will suggest that companies spend IP dollars on part interfaces that someone would actually want to copy, and add an image of a 9t compatible HG freehub from 2011.