Whether this helps or hurts FTDI in the long run, they made this decision, and they will ultimately be the ones dealing with the results.I don't think the impact on FTDI will be that big as they are likely to keep most of the business they have. The biggest question is how many design-ins they will miss due to people not using FTDI USB-UART bridges anymore for various reasons. Also note that WIndows 10 comes with drivers for almost every USB UART bridge out there so the advantage of having the drivers delivered with Windows and only FTDI's products working out of the box diminishes quickly.
I don't think the impact on FTDI will be that big as they are likely to keep most of the business they have. The biggest question is how many design-ins and new business they will miss due to people not using FTDI USB-UART bridges anymore for various reasons. Also note that WIndows 10 comes with drivers for almost every USB UART bridge out there so the advantage (unique selling point of FTDI) of having the drivers delivered with Windows and only FTDI's products working out of the box diminishes quickly.
They probably assumed (perhaps wrongly? That's not for me to say) that most people wouldn't blame them, they would blame the manufacturer who built the device. If the manufacturer was the one responsible, they had it coming (charging people for real devices and putting in fakes to increase profits), otherwise the manufacturer would blame their build house or distributor. If the build house/distributor was the one responsible, they had it coming (again, charging customers for real devices and supplying them with fakes), and so on up the chain. Maybe they thought this unfolding of events and the resulting tightening of supply chains would outweigh the backlash from end-users. I imagine they had discussions on the topic and came to this conclusion, but I don't have any inside information.
To me, the interesting thing about this whole mess is why FTDI chose the approach they did.
Just refuse to work
Ineffective, people will just role back driver and think nothing of it. Would create misplaced distrust of FTDI..
Just refuse to work
Ineffective, people will just role back driver and think nothing of it. Would create misplaced distrust of FTDI..
How does that not happen with their current approach?
Just refuse to work
Ineffective, people will just role back driver and think nothing of it. Would create misplaced distrust of FTDI..
How does that not happen with their current approach?
Because it sorta works, with odd results any decent engineer will pull up the serial stream to debug. And hey look, it says what's going on right there.
Translated to FTDI's situation: let the driver work with any chip and spend money on a FUD campaign. Much more effective because in the end nobody wants fake chips in their circuit.
Pop-up a message
Can't; driver runs outside user-space
ExRaiseHardError() sends a message to csrss, then csrss will pop up a message box.
Translated to FTDI's situation: let the driver work with any chip and spend money on a FUD campaign. Much more effective because in the end nobody wants fake chips in their circuit.
Bingo! More effective and preserves good will with users.
Wait wait wait, isn't the point of your last 10 pages that users have no idea what FTDI is or care about if it's a real chip or not?
What in the hell is an ad campaign going to do if that is true?
Showing message to Admins is not a bad idea. Most users, even with UAC enabled, are logged in as admins, except for enterprise environments.
Wait wait wait, isn't the point of your last 10 pages that users have no idea what FTDI is or care about if it's a real chip or not?No.
the majority of consumers would likely not know about it - since most will know nothing about FTDI, usb-serial conversion, etc. IOW - people with no knowledge or intention to buy a device with a cloned chip (or make a device with a cloned chip) are being adversly affected.
Wait wait wait, isn't the point of your last 10 pages that users have no idea what FTDI is or care about if it's a real chip or not?No.
Really?the majority of consumers would likely not know about it - since most will know nothing about FTDI, usb-serial conversion, etc. IOW - people with no knowledge or intention to buy a device with a cloned chip (or make a device with a cloned chip) are being adversly affected.
Hmmmmm....
BTW - since you seem to be trying to personalize it. Let me ask you a question: You seemed to have joined this forum only to defend FTDI - all of your posts are in this thread. Do you have any financial relationship with FTDI to disclose? If not, fine - but it's a question that needs to be asked since a similar thing happened during the first FTDI gate thread.
Oh get over it.
By just with experience using Windows workstations and Windows server versions, I would guess messages made by this call would never be seen by a windows workstation, even if logged in as admin. Windows Servers versions have mandatory click through when you bootup or shutdown that has messages like driver failures. And the stack exchange mentions when the 'admin logs in next time' so I assume it's that mechanism. You don't have that in non-server version.
One where we don't blame manufactures for breakdowns in supply chains.
I've seen no one here do that. The blame is being placed on FTDI for their destructive choices in how they deal with clones.
It's getting interesting. Which chips exactly don't have the FTDI name/logo and do use FTDI's USB VID & PID?
Please show me a link or a Farnell/Mouser/RS Components product number.Go back a few pages and read my posts... there's the Supereal SR1107/RD232A (likely the bulk of the clones) and Integral IZ232R (bare die). I also referenced this post from the first FTDIgate.
I followed your links but I couldn't find any real information about those chips like where I can buy them, and where to find
the datasheet. Can you please provide links with some real useful info?
You can find the Integral IZ232R datasheet here http://www.bms.by/eng/spec/index.php?pass=inf1
Given the choice I would happily pay a bit more for devices with a known authentic chip as I'm sure most would.
But I don't have that option so my choice is to no longer buy any devices that have "FTDI" chips..
They probably assumed (perhaps wrongly? That's not for me to say) that most people wouldn't blame them, they would blame the manufacturer who built the device. If the manufacturer was the one responsible, they had it coming (charging people for real devices and putting in fakes to increase profits), otherwise the manufacturer would blame their build house or distributor. If the build house/distributor was the one responsible, they had it coming (again, charging customers for real devices and supplying them with fakes), and so on up the chain. Maybe they thought this unfolding of events and the resulting tightening of supply chains would outweigh the backlash from end-users. I imagine they had discussions on the topic and came to this conclusion, but I don't have any inside information.
Exactly. The companies who chose to use risky supply channels are the ones that are going to have angry customers. This is how you force the issue and identify bad supply channels.To me, the interesting thing about this whole mess is why FTDI chose the approach they did.
I'm still waiting for an alternative to be suggested and not defeated. To recap, so there's no more spinning in circles in this thread, here's what's been suggested and defeated.
Use the laws to go after counterfeiters and cloners
Ineffective and prohibitively expensive, intentional trade law is useless.
Pop-up a message
Can't; driver runs outside user-space
Then just log a message in the system log
Really? Who reads their system log all the time?
Just refuse to work
Ineffective, people will just role back driver and think nothing of it. Would create misplaced distrust of FTDI.
Design a new chip with security features
Extremely expensive to redesign silicon. Not to mention any security/encryption features in the communications would mean there could be no Linux support. At least without binary blobs and we all know how linux people feel about binary blobs.
Given the choice I would happily pay a bit more for devices with a known authentic chip as I'm sure most would.
But I don't have that option so my choice is to no longer buy any devices that have "FTDI" chips..So, when you buy a car and it brakes down, you don't go back to the place where you bougth it but
buy another brand instead?
When I buy a device and it stops working, I go back to the seller and he will fix it, no matter what the cause is.