5 ms·

> “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 g

> “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.
    - sokoloff 11y ago
      I think GP's point was the capacitor issue was still a corporate IP issue. A (tampered) formula for electrolytic capacitor dielectric was stolen and the resulting capacitors were prone to premature failure. I don't see that as a "QA process gap".
      - deelowe 11y ago
        Dell didn't intentionally create that issue. They simply should have been performing better HALT to ensure they had coverage for bad caps. That's the qa escape. In this case, there is no way to test for this as ftdi doesn't provide any way to do so. They simply break stuff after the fact. The only way to prevent this from happening is to not use ftdi branded parts.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  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. Doesn't the Somehow some fakes point to those brands not entirely deserving a reputation for not shipping fakes? I get that an isolated incident is different than not caring at all, but fake chips ending up in their products is a demonstration that they are not fully preventing it. Whether consumers are interested in paying for products that they can be sure do not contain counterfeits is a different question than whether a given company shipped counterfeits or not.
  - deelowe 11y ago
    No. It points to ftdi not providing specs or tests for detecting fakes. They just randomly break shit. If there was a way to reliably check for fakes, people would use it.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      That just leads to the conclusion offered in the post I replied to: or hey, I got a better idea. Let's just not buy FTDI any longer. That sounds much cheaper and less painful. If you want to trade on your reputation and a manufacturer makes it impossible to verify their parts, don't use that manufacturer. I think differing ideas of 'reputable brand' may be the problem, you can't just want to be a reputable brand and go through some motions of providing quality, you have to walk the freaking walk.
      - deelowe 11y ago
        Yep. So the solution is to boycott ftdi.
        st3v3r 11y ago
        So basically, you feel that no one should respect your IP either.
- kybernetyk 11y ago
  >How can I, as consumer, be absolutely positive that that the "FTDI" chip in my device is genuine? Well, you can't. But that's just a side effect of the clones working with FTDI's drivers for so long. Now, when the clones stop working, your distributor won't be able to sell you counterfeit chips anymore. >Let's just not buy FTDI any longer. That or let your distributor know (wallet, lawyers, whatever) that you want the original FTDI chips you paid for and not knock offs. In any case this creates new opportunities on the market. FTDI had/has a quasi monopoly on those chips. When this end this might be painful in the short run but we could get so more competition into the market.
  - kabdib 11y ago
    > That or let your distributor know That's the booby prize. It's too late. You've shipped product containing chips that the FTDI driver bricks or disables, and (a) you are screwed, and (b) your customers are screwed. Meanwhile FTDI is chastising you for buying counterfeit chips. Logical response: To heck with the whole mess. Buy someone else's chips. This was not well thought out.
  - deelowe 11y ago
    Nah. I think I'll just buy chips from an ethical company.
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.

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.
  - sokoloff 11y ago
    I think GP's point was the capacitor issue was still a corporate IP issue. A (tampered) formula for electrolytic capacitor dielectric was stolen and the resulting capacitors were prone to premature failure. I don't see that as a "QA process gap".
    - deelowe 11y ago
      Dell didn't intentionally create that issue. They simply should have been performing better HALT to ensure they had coverage for bad caps. That's the qa escape. In this case, there is no way to test for this as ftdi doesn't provide any way to do so. They simply break stuff after the fact. The only way to prevent this from happening is to not use ftdi branded parts.
maxerickson 11y ago
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. Doesn't the Somehow some fakes point to those brands not entirely deserving a reputation for not shipping fakes? I get that an isolated incident is different than not caring at all, but fake chips ending up in their products is a demonstration that they are not fully preventing it. Whether consumers are interested in paying for products that they can be sure do not contain counterfeits is a different question than whether a given company shipped counterfeits or not.
- deelowe 11y ago
  No. It points to ftdi not providing specs or tests for detecting fakes. They just randomly break shit. If there was a way to reliably check for fakes, people would use it.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    That just leads to the conclusion offered in the post I replied to: or hey, I got a better idea. Let's just not buy FTDI any longer. That sounds much cheaper and less painful. If you want to trade on your reputation and a manufacturer makes it impossible to verify their parts, don't use that manufacturer. I think differing ideas of 'reputable brand' may be the problem, you can't just want to be a reputable brand and go through some motions of providing quality, you have to walk the freaking walk.
    - deelowe 11y ago
      Yep. So the solution is to boycott ftdi.
      - st3v3r 11y ago
        So basically, you feel that no one should respect your IP either.
kybernetyk 11y ago
>How can I, as consumer, be absolutely positive that that the "FTDI" chip in my device is genuine? Well, you can't. But that's just a side effect of the clones working with FTDI's drivers for so long. Now, when the clones stop working, your distributor won't be able to sell you counterfeit chips anymore. >Let's just not buy FTDI any longer. That or let your distributor know (wallet, lawyers, whatever) that you want the original FTDI chips you paid for and not knock offs. In any case this creates new opportunities on the market. FTDI had/has a quasi monopoly on those chips. When this end this might be painful in the short run but we could get so more competition into the market.
- kabdib 11y ago
  > That or let your distributor know That's the booby prize. It's too late. You've shipped product containing chips that the FTDI driver bricks or disables, and (a) you are screwed, and (b) your customers are screwed. Meanwhile FTDI is chastising you for buying counterfeit chips. Logical response: To heck with the whole mess. Buy someone else's chips. This was not well thought out.
- deelowe 11y ago
  Nah. I think I'll just buy chips from an ethical company.

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.