FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??

[joshhunsaker]

Another point, FTDI's registered trademarks only covers the words + design:

http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4801:j94gqz.2.1
http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4801:j94gqz.2.2

Neither are standard character marks (which cover just the letters or word without regard to typeface/font/etc), which means a chip that just shows "FTDI" without the actual logo/design are fine (bit of a stretch but still).  Also, in many countries, unless your trademark is registered (i.e. in that country) the best you'll get away with is "passing-off" or civil charges or some kind (not criminal).  It's already been shown that the chips themselves are not even a reverse engineered design.

[Fungus]

Making debugging tricking is actually part of the cat/mouse game. Making your special fake chip detection result in a constant stream of "Your chip is fake!" will literally make finding the code that does the detection trivial in reverse engineering the driver binaries as simple as looking for a constant of that very string.

But if the driver sticks in random bad data for detecting a fake chip and uses clever obfuscation techniques it can require extensive reverse engineering to find it if ever. (This along with any in text stream isn't very nice and is potentially dangerous)

Nope.

They don't need to disassemble FTDI's Windows driver code.

All the cloners care about is the data that appears on their end of the USB bus. You can get big USB debugging tools for that. If FTDI changes anything they'll just compare it with the data sent by last month's (working) driver to see what changed and update their FTDI emulation software accordingly.

[Fungus]

FTDI would be classified as "bricking" the counterfeit chips if they went and messed around with the clock configs to either overclock/source a non-existent clock or just corrupt the entire NV memory. Changing the PID to 0 is not damaging anything. The device won't ever work with the stock FTDI drivers and requires a 3rd party driver to work.

Word games won't save you in court.

If a machine was working yesterday and stopped working today because of something FTDI knowingly planned/did then they broke some laws.

If enough people complain (and I suggest you do!) then it could even become a class-action lawsuit that destroys their company. I wouldn't shed any tears, the world doesn't need companies that think/act like FTDI.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Has anyone actually taken them to court yet?

Someone in the UK with a product that was bricked by the driver could easily take them to Small Claims Court. It costs about £30 IIRC, and you don't need a lawyer or anything. The venue will be your local court, so they would have to come down from Scotland to where you are if they want to defend it. You can claim for the cost of a replacement Arduino or whatever, plus the £30 court fee and any time you took off work, bus fare etc.

Small claims can be a lottery, even for cases that don't involve highly technical issues. I'm not sure what happens where a case is deemed too complex to use the Small Claims track but I guess it could get expensive.
At the very least you'd probably have to hire an expert witness, the cost of whoch would probably not be recoverable.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

This must be the first time, but I agree with Rufus.
I don't see any reason why FTDI's driver can't do what it wants to any device that enumerates as one manufactured by FTDI. Those devices could and probably are giving FTDI a bad name. Some times the shit has to hit the fan to make your point. ie. Which manufacturers are supplying fake FTDI chips.

FTDI in retrospect is probably wishing they hadn't gone down this path though.

As to what is legal or not, who knows, nobody yet, and it would depend upon your legal jurisdiction anyway so it's probably going to be a whole range of outcomes.

No sarcasm here,
whoch is a nice word, whoch could be added to the English language.

[Simon]

Has anyone actually taken them to court yet?

Someone in the UK with a product that was bricked by the driver could easily take them to Small Claims Court. It costs about £30 IIRC, and you don't need a lawyer or anything. The venue will be your local court, so they would have to come down from Scotland to where you are if they want to defend it. You can claim for the cost of a replacement Arduino or whatever, plus the £30 court fee and any time you took off work, bus fare etc.

Small claims can be a lottery, even for cases that don't involve highly technical issues. I'm not sure what happens where a case is deemed too complex to use the Small Claims track but I guess it could get expensive.
At the very least you'd probably have to hire an expert witness, the cost of whoch would probably not be recoverable.

Quite the UK is a shit hole of very little consumer rights, dedicated "overseeing bodies" are more interested in procedures  Trading standards won't talk to the public and the cittizens advice beureu (CAB) are a charity that run the "Consumer direct helpline" that you have to make contact with and thre then put it through trading standards if they feel it's worth it, they are totally non technical.

I have already been down this route for that stupid fraudulent course I was put on that was technically flawed (I said technically, no matters of opinion), CAB the consumer helpline said go find your own expert witness and Ofqual which is the government regulator are a load of bollocks because they are not interested in any claim of fraud and have no interest in the qulaity of teaching materials and told me to go to trading standards (if only... sigh...), all they are interested in is if the private company that oversees the private company I got my course from followed their procedures in dealing with the company i bought the materials from, they have no interest in the company i dealt with they will only go one level down.

Welcome to the total lack of consumer rights in the UK! oh and half of the laws you think apply don't because Scottish laws apply to Scottish companies and so it adds complexity. I wished to god they got their fucking independence in name because they have it in fact anyway and take the piss!

[Simon]

This must be the first time, but I agree with Rufus.
I don't see any reason why FTDI's driver can't do what it wants to any device that enumerates as one manufactured by FTDI. Those devices could and probably are giving FTDI a bad name. Some times the shit has to hit the fan to make your point. ie. Which manufacturers are supplying fake FTDI chips.

FTDI in retrospect is probably wishing they hadn't gone down this path though.

As to what is legal or not, who knows, nobody yet, and it would depend upon your legal jurisdiction anyway so it's probably going to be a whole range of outcomes.

No sarcasm here,
whoch is a nice word, whoch could be added to the English language.

It would seem the linux drivers do not belong to FTDI and anyone can write a driver to work with the chips if they choose. The problem here is that there are 2 tings: Software copyright, and counterfeiting of physical goods. FTDI don't seem to care about the counterfeiting but the software copyright, so instead of dealing with the software copyright they damage peoples goods which are fully functional units that don't necessarily need their drivers.

[Cside]

Fwiw, I don't think FTDI actually care much about protecting their innovation. Serial-USB drivers aren't that innovative really and I haven't seen FTDI do anything out-of-the-box ever.
This smells to me like "hey, since we don't have anymore good ideas... how else can we make more money without oozing disingenuity ??"

[Simon]

Fwiw, I don't think FTDI actually care much about protecting their innovation. Serial-USB drivers aren't that innovative really and I haven't seen FTDI do anything out-of-the-box ever.
This smells to me like "hey, since we don't have anymore good ideas... how else can we make more money without oozing disingenuity ??"

Exactly what I've been saying, hence I'll not touch them as i have no interest in a company that is probably about to go under and the desperation of this move leads me to that conclusion.

[AndyC_772]

I'm inclined to agree. Why is it that, even with a completely fresh, straight-off-the-DVD installation of Windows, I can get a picture on my monitor, use my keyboard and mouse and access storage devices, but not send "hello world" to a COM port?

Perhaps the real problem here is the lack of a standard way to access a USB connected COM port, and a standard driver that performs this basic function. Relying on manufacturer-specific drivers seems like a fundamental omission.

If I can plug in a mouse and have it 'just work', why not a serial port?

[Simon]

I'm inclined to agree. Why is it that, even with a completely fresh, straight-off-the-DVD installation of Windows, I can get a picture on my monitor, use my keyboard and mouse and access storage devices, but not send "hello world" to a COM port?

Perhaps the real problem here is the lack of a standard way to access a USB connected COM port, and a standard driver that performs this basic function. Relying on manufacturer-specific drivers seems like a fundamental omission.

If I can plug in a mouse and have it 'just work', why not a serial port?

I think it's something to do with requiring a mouse, keyboard and monitor as a minimum requirement to interact with the machine and be able to install manufacturer specific drivers, infact a driver is not even needed, how do you think you can get into a PC's bios with no windows installed or drivers running. I'm sure it's also part down to harware manufacturers agreeing a base minimum standard/protocol else the whole thing fails to even work. Com ports on USB are not essential, they are additions to the most basic system. But yes I can't see why all of these devices can't use a generic driver. I think ram memory does not need a driver for a reason, if you have to boot the machine to load the driver you can't boot the machine, it's chicken and egg

[EEVblog]

May have already been posted, but it seems that FTDI have released their driver source code here:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/10/23/129

[AndyC_772]

I get the technical argument... it's more of a philosophical point, really. For something that's inherently manufacturer-specific like, say, a debug adapter for an MCU, or a piece of instrumentation, then I've no problem with a particular driver being needed.

A COM port, though, is a completely uninteresting, commodity item that either works or it doesn't. The lack of a common interface standard and baseline driver (as a part of the OS) seems like a glaring omission.

[Simon]

All FTDI had to do do keep counterfitters at bay was to not let the latest driver or any after it work and recommend that the last usable version was installed. Before long people would be flocking to buy genuine chips or make more effort to not get stung. The old driver could be available from FTDI only officially causing so much hassle for fakes that people would want genuine while not actually doing any damage.

[nctnico]

May have already been posted, but it seems that FTDI have released their driver source code here:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/10/23/129

No, this is a 'funny' patch for the Linux kernel to make Linux brick non-original devices.

[ctz]

May have already been posted, but it seems that FTDI have released their driver source code here:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/10/23/129

This is a joke, and the author of that patch works for TI.

Later on in the thread, there's a useful patch which teaches the kernel to load the FTDI-compatible driver for devices with PID 0x0000, thereby fixing devices broken by the Windows driver.

[ziq8tsi]

No you don't understand photocopiers will literally brick themselves (only certain models that are a "threat") and if any official tech ever sees the error code (the machine locks out as well and requires service to be unlocked) the legal hammer would come shortly. (Counterfeiting is illegal, no contract is required)

In the unlikely event that any of that is true, please name the manufacturers and jurisdictions in question, so that I may avoid them.

The fact that a copier thinks it has seen a Eurion constellation is nowhere near grounds to brick itself, let alone prosecute anybody.

[Simon]

No you don't understand photocopiers will literally brick themselves (only certain models that are a "threat") and if any official tech ever sees the error code (the machine locks out as well and requires service to be unlocked) the legal hammer would come shortly. (Counterfeiting is illegal, no contract is required)

In the unlikely event that any of that is true, please name the manufacturers and jurisdictions in question, so that I may avoid them.

The fact that a copier thinks it has seen a Eurion constellation is nowhere near grounds to brick itself, let alone prosecute anybody.

I think this idea was proposed some 10 years or more ago and received scorn all around due to it's stupidity and impracticability.

[Fungus]

All FTDI had to do do keep counterfitters at bay was...

What have they got against people who install kitchens?

[Simon]

All FTDI had to do do keep counterfitters at bay

What have they got against people who install kitchens?

  well at least I spelt it right 

[Fungus]

All FTDI had to do do keep counterfitters at bay

What have they got against people who install kitchens?

well at least I spelt it right

What does dinkel wheat have to do with FTDI drivers?

[Simon]

All FTDI had to do do keep counterfitters at bay

What have they got against people who install kitchens?

well at least I spelt it right

What does dinkel wheat have to do with FTDI drivers?

 oh god lighten up, if you want the latest just start reading from the start, at this stage we are just going round in circles anyway with new comers jumping in at the end as they just found us. Until FTDI make another move (assuming they dare flinch) theres nothing new to say around here. I think we have a world wide record for the thread that stayed on topic for so many posts 

[WakeUpWolfgang]

I am still fairly new to Electronic Engineering. I was going to make something using a FTDI part but with all of the conservancy I don't want to use them. What is a good alternative to FTDI?

[nitro2k01]

well at least I spelt it right

What does dinkel wheat have to do with FTDI drivers?

Not sure how serious that comment was, but in case you are unaware, spelt is not a misspelling, but the preferred spelling of "spelled" in British English.

[Simon]

well at least I spelt it right

What does dinkel wheat have to do with FTDI drivers?

Not sure how serious that comment was, but in case you are unaware, spelt is not a misspelling, but the preferred spelling of "spelled" in British English.

Well I am a little dyslexic, see what you mean, is "dinkel wheat" anything in particular ?