7 ms·

It is time we get a meme with Richard Stallman saying “I told you so”.

by andmarios 11y ago

arpa 11y ago
Wonderfully put.
pbhjpbhj 11y ago
https://imgflip.com/i/yedoi https://imgflip.com/i/yedoi ;0)>
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  http://games.usvsth3m.com/javascript-under-pressure/stallman.gif http://games.usvsth3m.com/javascript-under-pressure/stallman...
kybernetyk 11y ago
> “I told you so”. That breaking a license and using software with hardware it wasn't ever intended to be used with might produce undefined behaviour? Don't get me wrong: It would be great if we had an open source FTDI driver. But putting the blame on FTDI for all the people effectively pirating their software isn't the way to go. If you are a stern supporter of Free/open source licenses you also need to accept other peoples' rights to license their work as they think is right. Because without a strong licensing framework GPL & co. don't work either.
- deelowe 11y ago
  Here we go again. The issue here is that it's really difficult to buy chips directly from FTDI. So.. you have to buy from a distributor. Those distributors also buy from 3rd parties, trade inventory, issue new old stock, etc... How can I, as consumer, be absolutely positive that that the "FTDI" chip in my device is genuine? I'll go ahead and answer that. I can't. Anyone who works in the electronics industry knows this. When everything is made in china, it's very hard to be sure that fakes don't end up where they shouldn't belong. Why do I bring this up? Because, last time they pulled this crap, reputable brand's products were damaged. Somehow some fakes ended up in their supply and those customers got screwed. OK, so sure, we can fix the supply chain, add expensive testing to the manufacturing process, buy direct from manufacturer, etc... or hey, I got a better idea. Let's just not buy FTDI any longer. That sounds much cheaper and less painful.
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    >So.. you have to buy from a distributor. Those distributors also buy from 3rd parties In countries that respect IP this isn't a problem. The larger issue is China, Taiwan, etc don't respect IP and hard tactics like the FTDI driver bricking becomes a reality. No one wants to talk about the elephant in the room: Asian manufacturer corruption and lack of accountability with IP issues in those countries. Lets get one thing straight here. Multiple people/management in the supply chain here know these things are fake. They aren't stupid. They know that a no-name manufacturer who suddenly undercuts everyone else and uses FTDI's driver is a counterfeit. They chose this knowingly to save cost and said 'fuck all' to any issues later down the line. >Let's just not buy FTDI any longer. Dell didn't need to buy FTDI to have the nightmarish capacitor plague issue. FTDI didn't make all the toxic dogfood that killed all those US dogs in 2007. FTDI had nothing to do with putting melamine in infant formula. Again, you're ignoring the real issues of how China and Taiwan and other governments do a "wink, wink, nod, nod" when its comes to IP issues and encourage and even protect counterfeiters for the sake of economic output and underselling those who respect IP. Oh well, here comes the downvotes because on HN you can't criticize China, only Western nations. edit: to the person who thinks the capacitor issue was just a 'QA issue.' It was corporate espionage against Japan from China to get around IP issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Industrial_espionage_implicated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Industrial_es...
    - Nullabillity 11y ago
      > In countries that respect IP this isn't a problem. The larger issue is China, Taiwan, etc don't respect IP and hard tactics like the FTDI driver bricking becomes a reality. No one wants to talk about the elephant in the room: Asian manufacturer corruption and lack of accountability with IP issues in those countries. Wait what? The real issue is that manufacturers can push broken drivers (kernel-mode code!), with seemingly no oversight, to users who no longer have an option to opt out.
    - deelowe 11y ago
      > In countries that respect IP this isn't a problem. I don't disagree with you, but you can't ignore the realities of the world. One of those is that almost all electronics are made in these regions (fake and genuine). This is why supply chain control is very difficult in these places. Additionally, supply chain control is not my problem to solve. It's the vendor's (FTDI). > Dell didn't need to buy FTDI to have the nightmarish capacitor plague issue. None of those issues were created intentionally by a reputable company. Dell didn't intentionally start building bad caps. It was due to a QA process gap at a fairly reputable capacitor manufacturer. It was a mistake... In this case, FTDI is doing this on purpose. It's totally reasonable to blame FTDI for a problem they created.
- amluto 11y ago
  FTDI would arguably be justified in having their driver refuse to bind to counterfeit chips. Binding but causing deliberate malfunctions seems, to me, deserving of a lawsuit.
  - cnvogel 11y ago
    Exactly what they should have done. Return an error in the driver framework's evtDeviceStart (or similar...), let DeviceManager show the "device could not start" icon and write a "You are using a non-genuine USB to UART chip..." to the eventlog.
- fennecfoxen 11y ago
  > breaking a license and using software with hardware it wasn't ever intended to be used with might produce undefined behaviour? The problem today isn't just "undefined behavior". It could have been a problem yes, but FTDI defined this behavior quite specifically. The problem is they defined it with an in-band licensing message instead of out-of-band. Imagine if you were using Microsoft Outlook for email (hey, we're corporate here, cut us some slack) and the Outlook client determined that your Windows installation wasn't Genuine and it decided that the proper recourse was to replace the body of all your outgoing emails with a message saying "NON GENUINE WINDOWS(TM) FOUND". Would that sort of design be (a) insane, or (b) insane?
- andmarios 11y ago
  The end-user rarely use knowningly a FTDI chip or driver. They are part of a larger product that he payed for. An extreme example would be Monsanto selling genetically modified corn and potato seeds. Once they find counterfeit corn seeds, they alter their potato seeds so that when consumed with counterfeit corn seeds they make you vomit. You visit a restaurant, order a salad and since “you don't have license to consume the corn” you end up in the bathroom. :) There is a free-software FTDI driver[1]. What this driver doesn't do, is to destroy or send random data to a chip it doesn't recognize as original. [1] http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/usb/serial http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.g...
- thescriptkiddie 11y ago
  > It would be great if we had an open source FTDI driver We do have an open source FTDI driver, and it works perfectly with both the real thing and with clones.
killwhitey 11y ago
I've seen this one used on 4chan a lot https://i.imgur.com/mqLdyzE.jpg https://i.imgur.com/mqLdyzE.jpg
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

It is time we get a meme with Richard Stallman saying “I told you so”.

arpa 11y ago

Wonderfully put.

pbhjpbhj 11y ago

https://imgflip.com/i/yedoi https://imgflip.com/i/yedoi ;0)>

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
http://games.usvsth3m.com/javascript-under-pressure/stallman.gif http://games.usvsth3m.com/javascript-under-pressure/stallman...

kybernetyk 11y ago

> “I told you so”. That breaking a license and using software with hardware it wasn't ever intended to be used with might produce undefined behaviour? Don't get me wrong: It would be great if we had an open source FTDI driver. But putting the blame on FTDI for all the people effectively pirating their software isn't the way to go. If you are a stern supporter of Free/open source licenses you also need to accept other peoples' rights to license their work as they think is right. Because without a strong licensing framework GPL & co. don't work either.

deelowe 11y ago
Here we go again. The issue here is that it's really difficult to buy chips directly from FTDI. So.. you have to buy from a distributor. Those distributors also buy from 3rd parties, trade inventory, issue new old stock, etc... How can I, as consumer, be absolutely positive that that the "FTDI" chip in my device is genuine? I'll go ahead and answer that. I can't. Anyone who works in the electronics industry knows this. When everything is made in china, it's very hard to be sure that fakes don't end up where they shouldn't belong. Why do I bring this up? Because, last time they pulled this crap, reputable brand's products were damaged. Somehow some fakes ended up in their supply and those customers got screwed. OK, so sure, we can fix the supply chain, add expensive testing to the manufacturing process, buy direct from manufacturer, etc... or hey, I got a better idea. Let's just not buy FTDI any longer. That sounds much cheaper and less painful.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  >So.. you have to buy from a distributor. Those distributors also buy from 3rd parties In countries that respect IP this isn't a problem. The larger issue is China, Taiwan, etc don't respect IP and hard tactics like the FTDI driver bricking becomes a reality. No one wants to talk about the elephant in the room: Asian manufacturer corruption and lack of accountability with IP issues in those countries. Lets get one thing straight here. Multiple people/management in the supply chain here know these things are fake. They aren't stupid. They know that a no-name manufacturer who suddenly undercuts everyone else and uses FTDI's driver is a counterfeit. They chose this knowingly to save cost and said 'fuck all' to any issues later down the line. >Let's just not buy FTDI any longer. Dell didn't need to buy FTDI to have the nightmarish capacitor plague issue. FTDI didn't make all the toxic dogfood that killed all those US dogs in 2007. FTDI had nothing to do with putting melamine in infant formula. Again, you're ignoring the real issues of how China and Taiwan and other governments do a "wink, wink, nod, nod" when its comes to IP issues and encourage and even protect counterfeiters for the sake of economic output and underselling those who respect IP. Oh well, here comes the downvotes because on HN you can't criticize China, only Western nations. edit: to the person who thinks the capacitor issue was just a 'QA issue.' It was corporate espionage against Japan from China to get around IP issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Industrial_espionage_implicated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Industrial_es...
  - Nullabillity 11y ago
    > In countries that respect IP this isn't a problem. The larger issue is China, Taiwan, etc don't respect IP and hard tactics like the FTDI driver bricking becomes a reality. No one wants to talk about the elephant in the room: Asian manufacturer corruption and lack of accountability with IP issues in those countries. Wait what? The real issue is that manufacturers can push broken drivers (kernel-mode code!), with seemingly no oversight, to users who no longer have an option to opt out.
  - deelowe 11y ago
    > In countries that respect IP this isn't a problem. I don't disagree with you, but you can't ignore the realities of the world. One of those is that almost all electronics are made in these regions (fake and genuine). This is why supply chain control is very difficult in these places. Additionally, supply chain control is not my problem to solve. It's the vendor's (FTDI). > Dell didn't need to buy FTDI to have the nightmarish capacitor plague issue. None of those issues were created intentionally by a reputable company. Dell didn't intentionally start building bad caps. It was due to a QA process gap at a fairly reputable capacitor manufacturer. It was a mistake... In this case, FTDI is doing this on purpose. It's totally reasonable to blame FTDI for a problem they created.
amluto 11y ago
FTDI would arguably be justified in having their driver refuse to bind to counterfeit chips. Binding but causing deliberate malfunctions seems, to me, deserving of a lawsuit.
- cnvogel 11y ago
  Exactly what they should have done. Return an error in the driver framework's evtDeviceStart (or similar...), let DeviceManager show the "device could not start" icon and write a "You are using a non-genuine USB to UART chip..." to the eventlog.
fennecfoxen 11y ago
> breaking a license and using software with hardware it wasn't ever intended to be used with might produce undefined behaviour? The problem today isn't just "undefined behavior". It could have been a problem yes, but FTDI defined this behavior quite specifically. The problem is they defined it with an in-band licensing message instead of out-of-band. Imagine if you were using Microsoft Outlook for email (hey, we're corporate here, cut us some slack) and the Outlook client determined that your Windows installation wasn't Genuine and it decided that the proper recourse was to replace the body of all your outgoing emails with a message saying "NON GENUINE WINDOWS(TM) FOUND". Would that sort of design be (a) insane, or (b) insane?
andmarios 11y ago
The end-user rarely use knowningly a FTDI chip or driver. They are part of a larger product that he payed for. An extreme example would be Monsanto selling genetically modified corn and potato seeds. Once they find counterfeit corn seeds, they alter their potato seeds so that when consumed with counterfeit corn seeds they make you vomit. You visit a restaurant, order a salad and since “you don't have license to consume the corn” you end up in the bathroom. :) There is a free-software FTDI driver[1]. What this driver doesn't do, is to destroy or send random data to a chip it doesn't recognize as original. [1] http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/usb/serial http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.g...
thescriptkiddie 11y ago
> It would be great if we had an open source FTDI driver We do have an open source FTDI driver, and it works perfectly with both the real thing and with clones.

killwhitey 11y ago

I've seen this one used on 4chan a lot https://i.imgur.com/mqLdyzE.jpg https://i.imgur.com/mqLdyzE.jpg

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]