Author Topic: FTDIgate 2.0?  (Read 381082 times)

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Online Muxr

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #650 on: February 09, 2016, 04:02:53 pm »
Also he references Arduino clones being the main problem.  I didn't think any Arduino clones are using "FTDI" chips - are they?
Pretty sure most of the Arduino UNO clones use FTDI clones.

Wrong. Not a single one. The clones use either an  Atmel 16U2 or the CH340G. I have NEVER seen an UNO using a  FTDI, real or fake.
You're probably right, but I've definitely seen Uno clones using FTDI. Like freeduino for instance: http://www.freeduino.org/freeduino_open_designs.html
This one as well:
http://osepp.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/unor3plus_new.jpg
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Olimex-olimexino-328-Industrial-Arduino-Uno-R3-Compatible-Arduinos-con-Ftdi-/271124265959?_ul=BO&nma=true&si=D7IjNuwkE3IhdFLgSeHlXuMdhAY%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
« Last Edit: February 09, 2016, 04:12:05 pm by Muxr »
 

Offline Seekonk

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #651 on: February 09, 2016, 04:20:32 pm »
I just bought a few items and made a conscious effort to make sure it didn't contain FTDI, real or fake.  Not outraged, just don't want to have to deal with it now or in the future.  That feeling will stick with me.  Just like I don't care for any 555 circuits from 40 years ago.
 

Offline Karel

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #652 on: February 09, 2016, 05:36:17 pm »
Mr. Dart lives in an alternate reality if he thinks compatibles not using the FTDI name are counterfeits rather than just, well, compatibles... Hint, he probably typed this on a descendant of an "IBM PC compatible" |O
Actually he started his business by making chips for IBM clones. Oh the irony!

Did he start his business as a counterfeiter?
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #653 on: February 09, 2016, 06:00:51 pm »
Just like the FT232 clones he didn't copy the chips themselves but made functional equivalents and he must have put '100% IBM' compatible on his PC chipset products for them to sell.
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Offline c4757p

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #654 on: February 09, 2016, 06:44:10 pm »
Mr. Dart lives in an alternate reality if he thinks compatibles not using the FTDI name are counterfeits rather than just, well, compatibles... Hint, he probably typed this on a descendant of an "IBM PC compatible" |O
Actually he started his business by making chips for IBM clones. Oh the irony!

Did he start his business as a counterfeiter?

You don't read, do you? He clearly considers chips that are compatible with FT232 to be "counterfeits", whether or not they claim to be FTDI.
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Offline miguelvp

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #655 on: February 09, 2016, 06:45:41 pm »
Just like the FT232 clones he didn't copy the chips themselves but made functional equivalents and he must have put '100% IBM' compatible on his PC chipset products for them to sell.

True, but...
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In the early( pre-USB ) days we designed and sold 286/386/486 PC chipsets but we were reliant on a customer base of just 2 or 3 customers including IBM at one point.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #656 on: February 09, 2016, 07:08:43 pm »
I guess IBM counted their losses at some point because you better run when confronted with a tsunami. By the time the 80286 came out IBM wasn't a big player on the PC market anyway and who says FTDI made PC chips for IBM?
« Last Edit: February 09, 2016, 09:47:03 pm by nctnico »
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Offline timb

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #657 on: February 09, 2016, 10:04:14 pm »

I guess IBM counted their losses at some point because you better run when confronted with a tsunami. By the time the 80286 came out IBM wasn't a big player on the PC market anyway and who says FTDI made PC chips for IBM?

The CEO said it in the interview. It's at the start of it. He talks about how he started out designing PC Motherboard chips using PALs (basically combining a bunch of discrete TTL logic into a single chip). This was at a time when motherboards were just transitioning from all discrete to single purpose chipsets.

He says they had about 3 main customers, IBM being one of them. I think Compaq was another, as the Compaq Portable III (a 286 class machine) has PAL chips with FTDI markings on them.

Either way, it's very ironic that they started out selling chips to PC Compatible manufacturers and now they're loosing their shit over FTDI compatible chips.
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Offline marcan

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #658 on: February 10, 2016, 04:38:35 am »
Quote
The counterfeit chip was totally different design to the real FT232R and basically an imperfect copy, therefore it can be caught by our drivers in several ways which you’ll understand me keeping to myself.
LOL, he still thinks their detection logic is some kind of secret.

Quote
So, action number one was to detect counterfeit chips and stop them illegally using our drivers ( they steal our USB VID and PID in order to masquerade as an FTDI chip).
Except using your driver (and your VID/PID) is not illegal. Just because you don't like it doesn't make it illegal.

Quote
We’ve worked very closely with the US customs teaching them how to identify counterfeit FTDI components and this has resulted in several shipments of fake ships to gray market re-sellers in the US being impounded and destroyed.
Now if only you'd stuck to that instead of playing games with your driver!

Quote
When you have a success like the venerable FT232R, don’t sit on your laurels and let your competiton eat away at your market share.
... but apparently you go through two silicon revisions without fixing a major errata. A major errata which the "counterfeit" chips fix.
 

Online westfw

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #659 on: February 10, 2016, 06:51:42 am »
Quote
Pretty sure most of the Arduino UNO clones use FTDI clones.
Quote
  Wrong. Not a single one.
http://osepp.com/products/arduino-compatible-boards/uno-r3-plus/ Used (uses?) an FTDI.  I think a fake one too.  They weren't particularly cheap, and were sold via some retail chains (Fry's Electronics, in particular), indicating a substantial marketing effort, rather than a mom&pop eBay store.
http://osepp.com/products/arduino-compatible-boards/uno-r3-plus/
 

Online westfw

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #660 on: February 10, 2016, 06:55:42 am »
Quote
Except using your driver (and your VID/PID) is not illegal.
I'm pretty sure that this is in violation of assorted pieces of business, contract, and Intellectual property law.  The license terms of the FTDI driver only allow it to be used with FTDI chips.
 

Offline filssavi

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #661 on: February 10, 2016, 07:16:15 am »
Quote
Except using your driver (and your VID/PID) is not illegal.
I'm pretty sure that this is in violation of assorted pieces of business, contract, and Intellectual property law.  The license terms of the FTDI driver only allow it to be used with FTDI chips.

Well that depends in the country you are in, in the US i dont know but i'm prine to think you are right, in other countries (like Italy) which have a totally differenti legale system producer's can't put  anything they want in EULA's but most of if holds no legal value whatsoever, since if it goes against a right garanted by law it's the eula to be moot, not the law


And i'm sure that once you give me the driver i can di whatever the hell pleases me with that, it's even legal to decompile and reverse engineer if it's for compatibility purposes
 

Offline miguelvp

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #662 on: February 10, 2016, 07:30:40 am »
Well that depends in the country you are in, in the US i dont know but i'm prine to think you are right, in other countries (like Italy) which have a totally differenti legale system producer's can't put  anything they want in EULA's but most of if holds no legal value whatsoever, since if it goes against a right garanted by law it's the eula to be moot, not the law


And i'm sure that once you give me the driver i can di whatever the hell pleases me with that, it's even legal to decompile and reverse engineer if it's for compatibility purposes

Italy is probably the #1 country in counterfeit enforcement, regardless on reverse engineering of software.

But granted, they probably focus more on other things than counterfeit electronic chips. But the law makes it pretty illegal to import any kind of counterfeit goods (electronic or not)


 

Offline ve7xen

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #663 on: February 10, 2016, 07:34:33 am »
Quote
Except using your driver (and your VID/PID) is not illegal.
I'm pretty sure that this is in violation of assorted pieces of business, contract, and Intellectual property law.  The license terms of the FTDI driver only allow it to be used with FTDI chips.

Business/contract law:

I don't think it's ever been tested, but I find it hard to believe that a sane legal system would grant a fiat monopoly on a 16-bit integer (VID) to an organization. USB-IF is self-proclaimed and has no legal authority over the use of VIDs other than contracts their members may have signed and their USB trademarks. I don't know if the cloners are infringing on the USB trademarks, but I think that is an entirely unrelated matter to the use of VIDs they did not register with a standards body. IP law has gone sort of insane in North America in the past couple of decades, but reverse engineering and interoperability are still somewhat protected. IANAL, but in the spirit of the IP law and other judgements about protocol reversing and the like, I would think that VID use for interop purposes is probably allowed, and my personal opinion is that it should be. Reverse engineering and compatible products are an important part of a healthy competitive market IMHO.

Copyright:

The license terms of the FTDI driver are irrelevant to the cloners, even if EULAs were worth the bits they were stored with. The chip makers don't need to ever agree to them, in principle. It is the end user that uses the driver (though they don't need to agree to them either, since it's silently installed by Windows). Nor do the clone companies need to "copy" the driver such that copyright would be invoked, since the user can get it directly from FTDI, who is obviously licensed to copy their own code.


Legally my take is that both sides are mostly in the clear. If there are counterfeit chips with FTDI markings there might be a trademark case, but that doesn't mean the existence of clones is not allowed. I do not believe there would be a strong copyright or trade secret case. There may be patents involved, but since the CEO himself admits they have implemented the design in a completely different way, I doubt they are in play.
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Offline Karel

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #664 on: February 10, 2016, 07:37:00 am »
Just like the FT232 clones he didn't copy the chips themselves but made functional equivalents and he must have put '100% IBM' compatible on his PC chipset products for them to sell.

That's not counterfeiting.
 

Offline Karel

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #665 on: February 10, 2016, 07:38:38 am »
Either way, it's very ironic that they started out selling chips to PC Compatible manufacturers and now they're loosing their shit over FTDI compatible chips.

Nope, he's talking about counterfeiting. You know, the fake chips that carries the FDTI logo.
 

Offline marcan

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #666 on: February 10, 2016, 07:39:12 am »
Quote
Except using your driver (and your VID/PID) is not illegal.
I'm pretty sure that this is in violation of assorted pieces of business, contract, and Intellectual property law.  The license terms of the FTDI driver only allow it to be used with FTDI chips.
The FTDI driver EULA has zero legal validity, because it is distributed for free with Windows Update and there is no click-through agreement. EULAs apply to the end user. The end user doesn't get to see the FTDI driver's EULA when Windows installs it for them automatically - in fact, I think that version of the driver bundle doesn't have an EULA attached to it at all (even invisibly), it would just be the .inf and .sys files. The EULA has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on a manufacturer of silicon that just happens to share the same interface and VID/PID. Absent an EULA that is actually visible and agreed to, the FTDI driver is only protected by copyright - and copyright says absolutely nothing about what you can use software for, only how you can distribute it. And it's Microsoft doing the distributing here.

If FTDI only distributed their driver with an installer with a click-through EULA, then they might have a case against users who use the driver with non-FTDI hardware (not the manufacturer! the users!). Maybe. In some countries. The legal standing of EULAs is extremely variable. But since it is distributed through Windows Update, this doesn't apply.

USB VIDs and PIDs are not intellectual property. They are not trade secrets. They have absolutely zero inherent legal protection. They are just numbers. The only legal protection they have is granted by the USB-IF's logo usage agreement, that says that you can't put the official USB logo on a piece of hardware that doesn't have a legitimately acquired and used VID/PID (roughly speaking). Therefore, as long as the clones, and products using the clones, do not use the official USB logo (and of course don't use the FTDI logo either), there is absolutely nothing legally wrong with them, and nothing legally wrong with using them with the FTDI driver supplied via Windows Update.

FTDI can kick and scream all they want, but the law doesn't guarantee anyone a market, a monopoly, or exclusivity and control over your products. There is copyright protection, there is trademark protection, there are patents (not discussed here), and there is contract law. Without a contract (EULA), with no trademark infringement (FTDI and USB logos), and with no copying done by anyone other than Microsoft, they have nothing else to stand on.
 

Offline Ian.M

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #667 on: February 10, 2016, 07:52:28 am »
^ *THIS* ^

FTDI's only internationally accepted universal legal remedy is to 'take their ball and go home' i.e. to make their driver refuse to work with non-FTDI chips.  Its the fact that they've additionally deliberately tampered with 3rd party hardware (original FTDIgate) without seeking permission from the user, and now tampered with the user's data on the wire that has resulted in the mass outrage.

 

Offline miguelvp

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #668 on: February 10, 2016, 08:16:08 am »
A google search for

ftdi "non genuine device found"

returns 10 pages of results, hardly a mass outrage.

Edit: 22 pages if you include all languages around the planet.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2016, 08:17:48 am by miguelvp »
 

Offline Boomerang

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #669 on: February 10, 2016, 08:21:21 am »
the updated driver is only on Windows 10 or also on W8 and W7 ?
 

Offline FrankBuss

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #670 on: February 10, 2016, 09:45:16 am »
A google search for

ftdi "non genuine device found"

returns 10 pages of results, hardly a mass outrage.

Edit: 22 pages if you include all languages around the planet.
1,400 results, but if you search for "serial port not working" it is 24 million results. How many people know it is a serial port, but not that a FTDI driver sends this specific message which causes the problem? But right, FTDI gate 1.0 was worse, 37,800 results for "FTDI brick".
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Offline janoc

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #671 on: February 10, 2016, 09:59:46 am »
Quote
Pretty sure most of the Arduino UNO clones use FTDI clones.
Quote
  Wrong. Not a single one.
http://osepp.com/products/arduino-compatible-boards/uno-r3-plus/ Used (uses?) an FTDI.  I think a fake one too.  They weren't particularly cheap, and were sold via some retail chains (Fry's Electronics, in particular), indicating a substantial marketing effort, rather than a mom&pop eBay store.
http://osepp.com/products/arduino-compatible-boards/uno-r3-plus/

That is not a genuine Arduino, but a clone/compatible board.

The old Arduinos did use FTDI chips, though:


That is a genuine Arduino NG I bought directly from Italy, years ago. It is the first board that had USB (the original Arduino had an RS232 serial port). The FTDI chip is well recognizable. The Dueminalove and Diecimila that followed had FTDI as well:

https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Boards

Uno an onwards had the ATMega8u2.

They have also sold USB-UART adapters for the boards without them (Pro Mini, for ex.) using the FTDI chips :
https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/MiniUSB

 

Offline filssavi

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #672 on: February 10, 2016, 11:02:18 am »

Italy is probably the #1 country in counterfeit enforcement, regardless on reverse engineering of software.

But granted, they probably focus more on other things than counterfeit electronic chips. But the law makes it pretty illegal to import any kind of counterfeit goods (electronic or not)

you are mixing 2 things here

counterfeit enforcement is one thing, and it applies only if some kind of logo is used improperly (and here it might as well be the case)

usb's VID/PID are not a logo, they arent trademarked, they aren't trade secret they just are 2 numbers, of a well known and used protocol, as souch you cant ask the police to raid a wharehouse only because the IC's in there use that PIC/VID pair, (if they have your logo on them it's different) if you get them right bingo!! you talk with wathever driver you like, whether or not the driver responds is another can of worms (as stated 10 milion times FTDI can just refuse to talk to counterfeits)


if this problem is so bad for them, why don't they put a crypto hash based challenge/response authentication mechanism in their IC's? and discontinue the old one that doesn't have that (engineering wise is not that difficoult, you could even use C-to-HDL ans use a standard sha2 implementation, since it need not to be that fast)
 

Offline amyk

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #673 on: February 10, 2016, 12:22:43 pm »
Quote
Except using your driver (and your VID/PID) is not illegal.
I'm pretty sure that this is in violation of assorted pieces of business, contract, and Intellectual property law.  The license terms of the FTDI driver only allow it to be used with FTDI chips.

Business/contract law:

I don't think it's ever been tested, but I find it hard to believe that a sane legal system would grant a fiat monopoly on a 16-bit integer (VID) to an organization. USB-IF is self-proclaimed and has no legal authority over the use of VIDs other than contracts their members may have signed and their USB trademarks. I don't know if the cloners are infringing on the USB trademarks, but I think that is an entirely unrelated matter to the use of VIDs they did not register with a standards body. IP law has gone sort of insane in North America in the past couple of decades, but reverse engineering and interoperability are still somewhat protected. IANAL, but in the spirit of the IP law and other judgements about protocol reversing and the like, I would think that VID use for interop purposes is probably allowed, and my personal opinion is that it should be. Reverse engineering and compatible products are an important part of a healthy competitive market IMHO.

Copyright:

The license terms of the FTDI driver are irrelevant to the cloners, even if EULAs were worth the bits they were stored with. The chip makers don't need to ever agree to them, in principle. It is the end user that uses the driver (though they don't need to agree to them either, since it's silently installed by Windows). Nor do the clone companies need to "copy" the driver such that copyright would be invoked, since the user can get it directly from FTDI, who is obviously licensed to copy their own code.


Legally my take is that both sides are mostly in the clear. If there are counterfeit chips with FTDI markings there might be a trademark case, but that doesn't mean the existence of clones is not allowed. I do not believe there would be a strong copyright or trade secret case. There may be patents involved, but since the CEO himself admits they have implemented the design in a completely different way, I doubt they are in play.
Further reading... I posted these links before but they may have gotten lost in all the posts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_Chip_Protection_Act_of_1984
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_International,_Inc._v._Static_Control_Components,_Inc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade
 

Offline AlxDroidDev

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Re: FTDIgate 2.0?
« Reply #674 on: February 10, 2016, 01:20:01 pm »
Quote
Pretty sure most of the Arduino UNO clones use FTDI clones.
Quote
  Wrong. Not a single one.
http://osepp.com/products/arduino-compatible-boards/uno-r3-plus/ Used (uses?) an FTDI.  I think a fake one too.  They weren't particularly cheap, and were sold via some retail chains (Fry's Electronics, in particular), indicating a substantial marketing effort, rather than a mom&pop eBay store.
http://osepp.com/products/arduino-compatible-boards/uno-r3-plus/

That is not a genuine Arduino, but a clone/compatible board.

The old Arduinos did use FTDI chips, though:


That is a genuine Arduino NG I bought directly from Italy, years ago. It is the first board that had USB (the original Arduino had an RS232 serial port). The FTDI chip is well recognizable. The Dueminalove and Diecimila that followed had FTDI as well:

https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Boards

Uno an onwards had the ATMega8u2.

They have also sold USB-UART adapters for the boards without them (Pro Mini, for ex.) using the FTDI chips :
https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/MiniUSB

That's not an UNO.  That's a NG. There are no UNO clones using an FTDI, and my previous statement was directed specifically at the UNOs.

The UNO necessarily uses a 16U2. If it features anything other than that, it's not a clone, but a derivative.

I have a clone of the UNO, with a 16U2. It has all the right silk screens, except for the "Made In Italy". That's what gives away the fact that it's not a genuine Arduino.
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