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I agree that anyone who built a device and knowingly used a counterfeit FTDI chip deserved to be punished. However, the FTDI debacle didn't punish those people

I agree that anyone who built a device and knowingly used a counterfeit FTDI chip deserved to be punished. However, the FTDI debacle didn't punish those people, they're not the consumers. It punished end users who have no idea what an FTDI chip is or does or that one exists in the products they buy. In your airliner microcontroller example, you have much more informed consumers. They could reasonably be expected to know what processor is in their hardware, and to want to validate it. That's not the same. It would be more like a good packaging manufacturer finding that their packaging was being counterfeited and their proprietary plastic blend was somehow being leaked up the supply chain. If they changed their recipe to something toxic, but using good plastic internally, and when people started dying said "they should have bought potato chips packaged in genuine FoodSafeStuff bags". People don't know what their packaging is made from or who it's made by. They have no way to verify it prior to purchase, and even after purchase, it would take an expert to identify. And there's no customer loyalty based on the plastic bag, after the food manufacturer switches away from the counterfeit they won't be significantly harmed. But everyone who innocently bought those bags and got poisoned suffered real harm.

toohotatopic 6y ago
>People don't know what their packaging is made from or who it's made by. They have no way to verify it prior to purchase, and even after purchase, it would take an expert to identify. For food, you can't change the game without prior notice, but if it is clear that faked goods are toxic, people would start buying from trusted providers themselves. For electronics, I don't see a problem. If a device is bricked, go to your dealer and let him replace it. He will do the same for his supplier, etc. Somebody in the chain will discover that his supplier is a fraud. He will have to swallow the costs, but has learned a valuable lesson. If people have brought the product from some unstable source, then they most likely got it cheaper and they are now paying the price for the increased risk they took. It doesn't feel good but I don't think that it is unfair.
- pastage 6y ago
  The counterfeit FTDIs are ok. How drivers are created is a much bigger problem, the windows model specifically where hardware takes a long time, if ever, to be included in the default installation. Getting hardware to just work on windows was a mess (not sure if they have corrected this).
robomartin 6y ago
@LeifCarrotson You are making the mistake of taking a hypothetical and arguing against it. These are contrived examples designed to communicate a concept rather than an absolute reality that one should argue against. I'll just say that it is very common to see comments relating to hardware issues on HN from people who obviously don't have experience building hardware at scale. And so, it is hard to discuss these things due to the asymmetry of knowledge and experience. Any non-trivial hardware development and manufacturing operation has or should have professional supply chain management. It is their responsibility to ensure they build product as designed by engineers. If the hardware engineer specified an FTDI chip he or she did not mean "anything that is labeled similarly to FTDI". No, they meant to design in an FTDI chip. Anything else could fail or perform differently at any time. Blame for the bricking of devices given a change of driver code isn't with FTDI, it is with whoever manufactured the product that was supposed to use FTDI chips and did not. Let's also mention the very real potential for someone knowingly using clone chips in order to save money. It is preposterous to charge the chip manufacturer with this responsibility. There could be many tentacles to this kind of an issue, but the manufacturer ensuring that their drivers only work correctly with their chips isn't anti-consumer at all, quite to the contrary. Yet another angle: The crappy clone manufacturer --who could not care less about the consumer-- make a bad chip and it is the responsibility of the legitimate manufacturer to write the drivers and ensure it works well? In what alternate reality is that reasonable or required?
- fulafel 6y ago
  You are talking about compatibility but the FTDI case was a case of the company intentionally shipping malicious code used to brick the clones, no? Quote from article: "the latest driver bricks the fake chips, rendering them inoperable with any computer"
  - robomartin 6y ago
    Well done. They have the absolute right to create drivers that only work with their products in order to assure quality, performance and function. Fault is at the feet of the clone makers and those who used clone chips, not the legitimate manufacturer. I am actually astounded by some of these responses. However, I do understand that they likely come from a lack of experience delivering hardware products at scale, and so I can't fault people for getting it wrong. Hence my favorite quote: "A man holding a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way" --Mark Twain

toohotatopic 6y ago

>People don't know what their packaging is made from or who it's made by. They have no way to verify it prior to purchase, and even after purchase, it would take an expert to identify. For food, you can't change the game without prior notice, but if it is clear that faked goods are toxic, people would start buying from trusted providers themselves. For electronics, I don't see a problem. If a device is bricked, go to your dealer and let him replace it. He will do the same for his supplier, etc. Somebody in the chain will discover that his supplier is a fraud. He will have to swallow the costs, but has learned a valuable lesson. If people have brought the product from some unstable source, then they most likely got it cheaper and they are now paying the price for the increased risk they took. It doesn't feel good but I don't think that it is unfair.

pastage 6y ago
The counterfeit FTDIs are ok. How drivers are created is a much bigger problem, the windows model specifically where hardware takes a long time, if ever, to be included in the default installation. Getting hardware to just work on windows was a mess (not sure if they have corrected this).

robomartin 6y ago

@LeifCarrotson You are making the mistake of taking a hypothetical and arguing against it. These are contrived examples designed to communicate a concept rather than an absolute reality that one should argue against. I'll just say that it is very common to see comments relating to hardware issues on HN from people who obviously don't have experience building hardware at scale. And so, it is hard to discuss these things due to the asymmetry of knowledge and experience. Any non-trivial hardware development and manufacturing operation has or should have professional supply chain management. It is their responsibility to ensure they build product as designed by engineers. If the hardware engineer specified an FTDI chip he or she did not mean "anything that is labeled similarly to FTDI". No, they meant to design in an FTDI chip. Anything else could fail or perform differently at any time. Blame for the bricking of devices given a change of driver code isn't with FTDI, it is with whoever manufactured the product that was supposed to use FTDI chips and did not. Let's also mention the very real potential for someone knowingly using clone chips in order to save money. It is preposterous to charge the chip manufacturer with this responsibility. There could be many tentacles to this kind of an issue, but the manufacturer ensuring that their drivers only work correctly with their chips isn't anti-consumer at all, quite to the contrary. Yet another angle: The crappy clone manufacturer --who could not care less about the consumer-- make a bad chip and it is the responsibility of the legitimate manufacturer to write the drivers and ensure it works well? In what alternate reality is that reasonable or required?

fulafel 6y ago
You are talking about compatibility but the FTDI case was a case of the company intentionally shipping malicious code used to brick the clones, no? Quote from article: "the latest driver bricks the fake chips, rendering them inoperable with any computer"
- robomartin 6y ago
  Well done. They have the absolute right to create drivers that only work with their products in order to assure quality, performance and function. Fault is at the feet of the clone makers and those who used clone chips, not the legitimate manufacturer. I am actually astounded by some of these responses. However, I do understand that they likely come from a lack of experience delivering hardware products at scale, and so I can't fault people for getting it wrong. Hence my favorite quote: "A man holding a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way" --Mark Twain