FTDIgate 2.0?

[Monkeh]

Finally, FTDI having clone trouble is inevitable. Their chips are too expensive, and they are using the same design for years. Microchip, WCH and Silabs all have perfect substitutes for 1/4 of its price, probably even cheaper than clone FTDIs.

I don't see that - Digikey prices, $, 1000q

MCP2221   1.62
CP2104      1.25
FT230XQ    1.48

I didn't look for equivalent packages, but they are pretty much in the same ballpark.

I was talking about the old, clumsy FT232RL.

Which is only ever used in recent years because of counterfeits being cheap.

That and Arduino users not knowing how to do anything but copy and paste.

[all_repair]

Almost at zero cost, the FUD strategy (fear, uncertainty and doubt) is used on competitor product in keeping and in gaining customers, and in charging a premium.

You can test all you want at the point of purchase of your FDTI, but you never know what FDTI you really get, they may or may not work weeks, months, or years down the road.   FDTI is one of the rare companies that did, and is continuing doing FUD to their own brand.

[Sal Ammoniac]

The bottom line remains the same: People who unknowingly bought products with fake FTDI chips are being harmed and FTDI's actions are alienating their own customers. 

They're being harmed all right--by the counterfeit chip makers and the people who have lost control of their supply chain--not FTDI. While I'm sorry these people ended up with unusable products, the blame lies with whoever they bought it from (or upstream from there).

When the U.S. Secret Service confiscates counterfeit currency, even if you received it unknowingly, they are NOT going to replace the bogus currency they seize with genuine dollars. They're effectively denying you the use of that money. Same with FTDI--they're denying your use of their drivers with your counterfeit product, even though you may not have knowingly bought it with bogus parts (although I'm sure that a lot of people would buy such an item even knowing that it had counterfeit parts if it's cheaper than the same thing with legitimate chips).

[mtdoc]

When the U.S. Secret Service confiscates counterfeit currency, even if you received it unknowingly, they are NOT going to replace the bogus currency they seize with genuine dollars.

And if counterfeiting was a widespread problem (it's not) and the government suddenly had a widespread policy of seizing and not replacing a large number of average peoples cash that would be similarly wrongheaded and self-destructive.

[Sal Ammoniac]

That's fine. But dumping trash data or frying chips are not fine.

And making counterfeit chips or otherwise ripping off FTDI's IP is fine? Maybe in China, but not where I'm from.

Sure, FTDI took the nuclear option here, but I think they're completely justified in doing so.

[Sal Ammoniac]

And if counterfeiting was a widespread problem (it's not) and the government suddenly had a widespread policy of seizing and not replacing a large number of average peoples cash that would be similarly wrongheaded and self-destructive.

They already do it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States

[suicidaleggroll]

And if counterfeiting was a widespread problem...

Do you have any reason to believe this FTDI counterfeit problem is any more widespread (outside of the cheap clone devices on eBay/Ali)?  Has anybody here purchased any FTDI device from a legitimate distributor in the last, say, 6 months and received a fake?  I've purchased hundreds over the last 2-3 years, and have never seen one (at least none has ever been detected as such by their driver).

[timb]

The bottom line remains the same: People who unknowingly bought products with fake FTDI chips are being harmed and FTDI's actions are alienating their own customers. 

They're being harmed all right--by the counterfeit chip makers and the people who have lost control of their supply chain--not FTDI. While I'm sorry these people ended up with unusable products, the blame lies with whoever they bought it from (or upstream from there).

When the U.S. Secret Service confiscates counterfeit currency, even if you received it unknowingly, they are NOT going to replace the bogus currency they seize with genuine dollars. They're effectively denying you the use of that money. Same with FTDI--they're denying your use of their drivers with your counterfeit product, even though you may not have knowingly bought it with bogus parts (although I'm sure that a lot of people would buy such an item even knowing that it had counterfeit parts if it's cheaper than the same thing with legitimate chips).

That's fine. But dumping trash data or frying chips are not fine.

This. Refuse to load the driver and print a message to the system log, but don't spew trash data out and don't brick the chips. This isn't hard to understand...

Since you guys love extreme analogies so much, here's one for you:

FTDI just keeps digging the hole deeper and deeper; their disgruntled customers are pissing in the hole; all while the counterfeiters shit in it. Eventually they're going to drown in a hole full of piss and shit. 

[Sal Ammoniac]

Cloning die is a big no go. Cloning protocol, as long as it was not patented, is fine at least in China. But you CAN NOT put FTDI logo on the chip, of course.

In this particular case these bogus chips must have had the FTDI logo on them because everyone's saying that even legitimate distributors haven't been able to tell the good chips from the bad.

[dannyf]

the government suddenly had a widespread policy of seizing and not replacing a large number of average peoples cash that would be similarly wrongheaded and self-destructive.

So, France and Italy are suddenly no longer the utopia you had wanted for you and your family?

Welcome to reality.

[Sal Ammoniac]

This. Refuse to load the driver and print a message to the system log, but don't spew trash data out and don't brick the chips. This isn't hard to understand...

What isn't too hard to understand is that we've become an entitlement society where nothing is our fault or our problem and that someone else should foot the bill for these screw ups. The marketplace is rife with this. The only reason counterfeit Rolex watches, Gucci handbags, Prada shoes, and cable TV pirate boxes exist is because there's a ready market for them (and don't try to tell me that anyone who's offered a "Rolex" for $50 has the slightest inkling that it's genuine).

[miguelvp]

Again No one responded yet about purchasing the fake Art Of Electronics 3rd edition or forcing the authors to bring the price down to the same cost as the counterfeiters.

That is entirely different.

If Horowitz and Hill were breaking into peoples homes and burning or defacing the copies people had unknowingly bought - then that might be analogous.

No one here has been defending the cloners. The issue is the way FTDI is responding.

Not different, consumers don't know they are buying a fake, and hurts the reputation of the authors when it's not the real thing. The only difference is that they can't do much about it other than to spread the word like they did by sending Dave the counterfeit book.

On FTDI,
The driver just refuses to talk to the device and informs you that the device is a counterfeit. What more do you want? That's far from breaking some equipment.

The only thing I hear is speculation that it might. But since it hasn't happen for the last 7 months to this date, I guess it's just that, speculation.

[madsci1016]

Ok, sat by the sidelines and watched long enough, had to register to make a comment.

I don’t think many of the engineers attacking here have every worked in marketing to understand the real issue here. Instead of discussing what FTDI could have done, let’s discuss what the cloners could have done.

As many have pointed out, the clone chips are a whole different architecture, they are not copying FTDI silicon IP. They could have been really lazy, squatted a random VID/PID and just copied FTDI’s drivers, modified the VID/PID to match and released a true competitor to FTDI without relying on FTDI drivers. But they didn’t do that.

Why? Because they don’t want to be competitors to FTDI, they want you to think they ARE FTDI.

Because they don’t see profit in being a competitor to FTDI, as no one ordering large quantities is going to randomly buy a no-name competitor that has no brick-and-mortar support chain in place like FTDI. They want you to think you are paying the big bucks for a trusted name, trusted reliability and trusted support chain for a product that has none of the above.

To anyone working marketing for FTDI, this has been war for years, they have been under major assault.

To give an example of how important brand integrity is, let me tell you about my relative. He took a job for a while as a big brand repair tech. Let’s say Samsung. During his training they had to take apart brand new $2000 LCD TV sets to the motherboard and put them back together. They were judged on how well the TVs functioned after this process. Then, all the TVs were thrown out. Even if they worked. All 20 techs in the class, in a class repeated every month, TVs were thrown out. And a guard was stationed 24/7 at the garbage can so no employees would take a TV home. And companies do this for all their electronics used for training! Think of all that e-waste.

Because Samsung would rather eat the cost of these TVs, then risk a single one ending up on craigslist, sold and then failing after a month since QC is useless once the TV was taken apart. That could be one customer that would swear never to buy Samsung again, and the brand is tarnished.

That is how marketing people consider the importance of brand recognition.


I know of, through direct interaction, 2 large tech companies that use FTDI in their products today. In a 5 figures of quantity scale. They use them because of their history and brand trust. Their chips have worked well for years, and they have engineers on call that have worked with us during development issues. I  polled the tech labs of both companies after the last FTDIgate and none of the veteran engineers batted an eye, and they still use FTDI, because it’s FTDI. It works, well, and has for years. We pay to get them from US distributors and have never had a product stop working due to a fake chip.

This. Refuse to load the driver and print a message to the system log, but don't spew trash data out and don't brick the chips. This isn't hard to understand...

Really? Let's think through this...

Have you ever installed an updated driver to find the hardware stop working? What’s the first thing you do? Do you rip open your computer or device and check all chips for authenticity? What many people do, is roll-back to the last known working driver, curse the company for making a bad new driver, and never update the driver again. That does nothing to alert anyone to a bad supply chain. And it does everything to make you think FTDI is horrible at releasing working drivers.

[mtdoc]

And if counterfeiting was a widespread problem (it's not) and the government suddenly had a widespread policy of seizing and not replacing a large number of average peoples cash that would be similarly wrongheaded and self-destructive.

They already do it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States

You've missed the point.

What if tomorrow the government announced that they had determined that there was in circulation a large number of counterfeit $20 bills - say encompassing 10% of bills in circulation - that were not easy for the average person to detect.  If they then stationed secret service agents in front of every grocery store in the country who then proceeded to, without permission, go through each person's wallet and remove the counterfeit bills, would you support that? How do you think the public would respond?

The government would never be so stupid to do this. Instead of focusing on the average end user of currency - they appropriately put a lot of effort into making it difficult to counterfeit and then directly target the counterfeiters in their enforcement.

The currency analogy is better than others but still imperfect. Why?  Because, unlike currency, FTDI could choose another way to to target the end user as others have pointed out. Simply - make the driver non functional with fake chips.  Bricking chips and generating erroneous output is not ok and will only contribute to their ongoing fall.

[all_repair]

This. Refuse to load the driver and print a message to the system log, but don't spew trash data out and don't brick the chips. This isn't hard to understand...

I am not sure "refuse to load" and 'refuse to work" is an acceptable solution.  It is too late to do this kind of fixes.  Prolific did that when they were relatively new and acted very fast.  Frankly it is too late for FDTI having a much larger installed base and acted so late.   For future-FDTI that still has a brand to protect.  They have to do a manual scheme (forget about potecting their driver, protect the "brand").  There need to have somekind of codes from the big boxes, to the individual trays and eventually down to the final dongle that their customers can check online to verify.  And they can keep track and display the number of time, location of all the previous verifications.

[madsci1016]

And if counterfeiting was a widespread problem (it's not) and the government suddenly had a widespread policy of seizing and not replacing a large number of average peoples cash that would be similarly wrongheaded and self-destructive.

They already do it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States

You've missed the point.

What if tomorrow the government announced that they had determined that there was in circulation a large number of counterfeit $20 bills - say encompassing 10% of bills in circulation - that were not easy for the average person to detect.  If they then stationed secret service agents in front of every grocery store in the country who then proceeded to, without permission, go through each person's wallet and remove the counterfeit bills, would you support that? How do you think the public would respond?

The government would never be so stupid to do this. Instead of focusing on the average end user of currency - they appropriately put a lot of effort into making it difficult to counterfeit and then directly target the counterfeiters in their enforcement.

The currency analogy is better than others but still imperfect. Why?  Because, unlike currency, FTDI could choose another way to to target the end user as others have pointed out. Simply - make the driver non functional with fake chips.  Bricking chips and generating erroneous output is not ok and will only contribute to their ongoing fall.

Your argument is based on the scale of the problem, which as far as I know we don't have and accurate idea of the number of counterfeit vs real FTDI chips is production products, so your whole argument is based on assumptions.

My wife was a bartender in college. She's been paid and tipped with fake $50 and $100 bills all the time, and every time it came out of her take of the tips/salary. That's the rules to make employees do a better job at screening for fakes. And it happens to bar tenders across the country, as bad guys think darken bars is the best chance of getting away with it.

I like this fake currency analogy as it is spot on.

[nctnico]

The analogy is not spot on. Fake cash can be spotted/tested the moment you receive it. A device with a fake FTDI chip is impossible to spot. Every time I have to deal with a relatively large amount of cash I have it tested. Now show me a device which can test whether a device has a fake FTDI chip in it or not.

[madsci1016]

The analogy is not spot on. Fake cash can be spotted/tested the moment you receive it. A device with a fake FTDI chip is impossible to spot. Every time I have to deal with a relatively large amount of cash I have it tested. Now show me a device which can test whether a device has a fake FTDI chip in it or not.

LOL! That's actually what this firmware does! Put FTDIs in a jig and attach them to a windows PC, it will now scream out at you that it's fake! Any suspect device with a FTDI chip in it will now self test with this driver.

[nctnico]

The analogy is not spot on. Fake cash can be spotted/tested the moment you receive it. A device with a fake FTDI chip is impossible to spot. Every time I have to deal with a relatively large amount of cash I have it tested. Now show me a device which can test whether a device has a fake FTDI chip in it or not.

LOL! That's actually what this firmware does! Put FTDIs in a jig and attach them to a windows PC, it will now scream out at you that it's fake! Any suspect device with a FTDI chip in it will now self test with this driver.

Buzzzz wrong! You never know if your device has a better fake the driver cannot detect yet but the next driver will. Money has clearly defined markers which tell whether it is genuine or not so a test for real/fake money is well defined. Detecting fake FTDI chips on the other hand is a moving target. Today a device can pass the test, tomorrow it may not.

[madsci1016]

The analogy is not spot on. Fake cash can be spotted/tested the moment you receive it. A device with a fake FTDI chip is impossible to spot. Every time I have to deal with a relatively large amount of cash I have it tested. Now show me a device which can test whether a device has a fake FTDI chip in it or not.

LOL! That's actually what this firmware does! Put FTDIs in a jig and attach them to a windows PC, it will now scream out at you that it's fake! Any suspect device with a FTDI chip in it will now self test with this driver.

Buzzzz wrong! You never know if your device has a better fake the driver cannot detect yet but the next driver will. Money has clearly defined markers which tell whether it is genuine or not so a test for real/fake money is well defined. Detecting fake FTDI chips on the other hand is a moving target. Today a device can pass the test, tomorrow it may not.

Wait a minute, you are arguing that fake money and fake FTDI are not equally because fake FTDIs are always getting better at being fakes and fake money is not? Really?

Advances and printers and scanners didn't make the federal exchange design new and tougher protections? SO i guess all currency started out with ink markers, holograms, interleaved strips, Micro-printing, etc all at once 100s of years ago and the counterfeit groups had a challenge to face that never changed. Huh. 

[mtdoc]

Your argument is based on the scale of the problem, which as far as I know we don't have and accurate idea of the number of counterfeit vs real FTDI chips is production products, so your whole argument is based on assumptions.

No it is not. Change the number to 1% - it's the same - would you then support agents stopping everyone entering a grocery store and confiscating counterfeit currency?

My wife was a bartender in college. She's been paid and tipped with fake $50 and $100 bills all the time, and every time it came out of her take of the tips/salary.

   50-$100 tips! What kind of bartender was she? In any case - did it happen to her? was she ok with that?

That's the rules to make employees do a better job at screening for fakes. And it happens to bar tenders across the country, as bad guys think darken bars is the best chance of getting away with it.

This is were your example completely breaks down.  It's based on the fact that the bartender, waiter, cashier, etc can detect the fake bills before accepting them.  I was a waiter years ago and we were trained to examine large bills (generally not tips) and how to detect fakes - so were the cashiers . If the bills did not show any of the tell tale signs - we were not responsible.

Again - what if the counterfeit bills were impossible for the general public to detect (as is the case with the fake FTDI chips)?

No one buying a product has the ability to know it contains a FTDI clone before purchasing and even after it may be difficult or even impossible to determine if it is fake without running FTDIs destructive firmware.

What the FTDI apologists continue to ignore is the fact that consumers have no way of knowing the product has a fake FTDI chip in it beforehand and are being harmed by FTDIs tactics if it does. This is causing the people who make the choice of what chip to use in their product - choose other chips. FTDI claims to be targeting the cloners but continues to shoot themselves in the foot.

[madsci1016]

No it is not. Change the number to 1% - it's the same - would you then support agents stopping everyone entering a grocery store and confiscating counterfeit currency?

Again do you have accurate #s of fake FTDIs to compare? I don't. And IF you willingly posse or use fake currency, you are breaking the law. Your example is actually more tame than reality. What's the difference between agents checking your purse, or you trying to spend the fake money, the cashier holding onto it when they see it's fake and calling the cops? That's what actually happens, as cashiers if you detect a fake you are told to hold onto it, report it to management so they can call the cops. You don't get it back. I was a cashier for Publix as a kid. That was the procedure.

Once identified you lose use of that counterfeit money. Just like here where you lose use of the fake FTDI, once identified. Socially it's always been accepted that the world works as receiver beware. Just because you got dupped into taking something fake, doesn't mean you have a legal or moral right to use it or pass it along. Wherever the fake is detected, it gets taken away.

   50-$100 tips! What kind of bartender was she? In any case - did it happen to her? was she ok with that?

PAID and tipped. Not just tipped. And no, of course not. But she didn't blame the system by which the bill was determined counterfeit, she blamed the person that gave it to her!

This is were your example completely breaks down.  It's based on the fact that the bartender, waiter, cashier, etc can detect the fake bills before accepting them.  I was a waiter years ago and we were trained to examine large bills (generally not tips) and how to detect fakes - so were the cashiers . If the bills did not show any of the tell tale signs - we were not responsible.

We have that now ! It's this firmware. You can build a jig and test all incomming stock. It will self test when you connect it to a Windows PC.

no way of knowing the product has a fake FTDI chip in it beforehand and are being harmed by FTDIs tactics if it does.

Funny, I assume for all fake ICs, not just FTDI, that we never have a good way to know if they are fake or not. Some bad FETs may overheat and catch fire. We still don't blame the fire for making the device inoperative. We blame the supply chain that gave us the fake

[mtdoc]

Again do you have accurate #s of fake FTDIs to compare?

And again, that is irrelevant to the point.

And obviously if the number of fake chips was very, very small, FTDI would not attempt these shenanigans.

We have that now ! It's this firmware. You can build a jig and test all incomming stock. It will self test when you connect it to a Windows PC.

You've completely ignored my point: The one who is being punished, end user buying the product has no way of determining the authenticity before they buy it and also after they buy it (without a destructive firmware test).

There seems to be a real inability by some to acknowledge that the people most adversely affected by FTDI's actions are those who have no way to avoid the problem other than try to buy products that use chips from other manufacturers- that is assuming they are even sophisticated enough to know how to determine that.

Some bad FETs may overheat and catch fire. We still don't blame the fire for making the device inoperative. We blame the supply chain that gave us the fake

Strawman. No one would blame FTDI if fake chips were catching on fire.

[miguelvp]

...
What the FTDI apologists continue to ignore ...

That labeling of people that don't share your opinion cancels everything you are saying because you are not being objective.

Myself I find Cypress offerings better for my needs, that doesn't tarnish my objectivity of expressing my opinion against IP theft.

Buy go ahead and promote piracy all you want.

Let's be clear about what the driver does and doesn't, your PC sends characters and the driver echoes the "NON GENUINE DEVICE FOUND!" character by character as you try to communicate with the device.

Even if the device receives those strings it would be a pretty poorly designed protocol that blindly accepts anything without initialization and exchanging some initialization handshakes to make sure the device is communicating with the appropriate piece of software running on the PC, otherwise any other program can hijack the COM port and create havoc.

I think it's a valid implementation from FTDI part to protect their hard work.

Claiming that a lot of devices are affected by this? well then they should return them to whoever was careless enough to use fakes, and I don't buy it that they are victims, they are purchasing the cheapest offerings on purpose, so it's their fault for promoting unfair competition and theft.

What if you buy an expensive piece of kit, you check it and it has Rubycon caps on the power supply so you feel really good about it, but they happen to be fake and shortly after a year and your warranty expiring, they start leaking. Who are you going to blame?

The message that comes across from you, even if you have mentioned many times that you are against counterfeit products is that you are indeed blaming companies that are trying to do something about it.

[c4757p]

I don't buy it that they are victims, they are purchasing the cheapest offerings on purpose, so it's their fault for promoting unfair competition and theft.

People who buy inexpensive things are "promoting unfair competition and theft"? What's your cutoff price where one transitions from promoting theft to being an honest buyer?