[time-nuts] If any of your USB devices have stopped working lately...

Richard (Rick) Karlquist richard at karlquist.com
Fri Oct 24 02:31:10 UTC 2014


This dispute reminds me of another one.
A long long time ago, .gif was the internet
standard for encoding photographs.  Far and
away the favorite.  Then the owner (was it
AOL?) decided to enforce their patent by
getting snotty with end users.  Almost overnight,
.gif virtually disappeared off the face of the
earth, to be replaced by .jpg, previously an
also-ran.  The IP holder got their wish "We
wish people would stop free loading on our
IP.".  Be careful what you wish for as the
saying goes.  Let's see if history repeats itself.

Rick Karlquist N6RK

On 10/23/2014 6:45 PM, Mark Sims wrote:
> Happened to a friend of mine.  All his Arduino stuff died.   This could be the reason:
> http://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/ftdi-driver-kills-fake-ftdi-ft232
> Short story:  FTDI released a new version of their USB driver (via Windows automatic updates no less) that bricks other vendor's compatible versions of their interface chip.   They also updated their license file to indicate that this may happen...  except you never get a chance to decline the new license with automatic driver updates.  I can just hear the class action lawyers drooling...
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