Flaccid Ostrich - Floppy Emu compatible clone

[zigzagjoe]

I think the question is now - given Steve is provably not OK with what has transpired - will this person remove it? There's no reasonable legal remedy here as this person is presumably anonymous and if the location is accurate, overseas. So it really does comes down to morals.

I rather doubt it will be pulled given the flaccid reasoning to date, but it'd be nice to be proven wrong.

 

[YMK]

But this isn’t a competitor: it’s a simple clone whose only value comes from my design, my firmware, and the functions and features that I developed through literally thousands of hours of effort.

Too many cannot comprehend why hardware should cost any more than its BOM.

I'd say for my products, 90%+ of the effort went into software. If I wasn't fairly confident I could protect it, I wouldn't have bothered.

People capable of this kind of work could be doing far more profitable things with their time.

 

[Kay K.M.Mods]

Hi all, I am very disappointed with that cloned FEMU hardware. We at Kero's Mac Mods and @bigmessowires cooperate, although of course there are some items that compete with each other.

The Chinese (?) clone developers who are often talked about are simply ignoring CC and the law, so it's completely pointless. Not only that, but when we complain to individual sellers that we are violating the law, some (eBay) don't stop listing them, saying they're just selling spare parts. It really makes me feel like I'm being ignored, and it makes me sad. So, for now, all I can do is tell people all over the world, from where I live in Japan, that if you come across these clone products, never buy them and report them as violations. Plz remember that FEMU is still being updated and is not a forgotten product.
I hope the developer of this clone unit will keep it to himself hobby and stop publishing that on github. He has the skills to reverse engineer, so if he has enough ideas he can create devices of his own design. Thank you.

 

[colinlm]

I think the question is now - given Steve is provably not OK with what has transpired - will this person remove it? There's no reasonable legal remedy here as this person is presumably anonymous and if the location is accurate, overseas. So it really does comes down to morals.

I rather doubt it will be pulled given the flaccid reasoning to date, but it'd be nice to be proven wrong.

He did remove it. I don't think for a moment their intentions were nefarious vis à vis of @bigmessowires.

 

[Tashtari]

Color me pleasantly surprised. Good on them.

 

[hkzlab]

Greetings everyone,
this is one hell of a way to introduce myself, but a message to everyone is warranted after the mess I caused. I assure you, it wasn't my intention.

But first things first.
Thanks to @This Does Not Compute for notifying me about this thread, so I could read it, understand the perspective of others, seen that I was actually causing a damage and correct course as soon as possible by pulling the repository and the gerbers from PCBWay.

I also sent a direct email to @bigmessowires trying to clarify the situation and explaining I wasn't armed with bad intentions when I started this side-project, even though it brought about negative consequences. Hopefully not too severe.

Now, why did I do this? It boils down to a case of me putting the "can I?" before the "should I?": A few weeks ago I killed the CPLD and MCU on my FloppyEmu by misconnecting the cable during an intense troubleshooting session for another cloning project (this time of a very much dead computer model). I decided to investigate on what info was around to help me fix it, and in the meantime buy another so, if the issue happened again, I wouldn't be left dead in the water.

I ended up finding not the price of the device, but shipping itself (around 100$ to Italy, if I remember correctly, added to the cost of the device) too much to justify the expense at this time for me, so, after I repaired mine (took just two days, turned out I had all the components already in storage) and updated the schematics of the 2012 version that was floating around the net (a very limited number of changes), I wondered if, just as an experiment, I would have been able to create a fully THT version of the device. So I did.

And I should have stopped there, really, or go ask @bigmessowires if it was fine to release first.
But I (wrongly) assumed that, given that the CPLD is now EOL, that a bigger, THT based board would be unworthy of mass production by others, and that there are already clones available in the black market (ran into a few in facebook, in the past), not many would have been interested in a version that I considered not much more than a toy.

Well, I ****ed up, and especially since I read Steve saying that this would have caused him and his family a damage, I pulled everything away immediately

 

[eric]

Thanks for replying @hkzlab

I don't think the best way is to try to shame but, as said, to remind people respectfully of potential community impact (which I'm glad of the turned tone in the conversation).

One thing that sticks out to me is that the barrier to entry for RE and manufacturing is historically low and access to information historically high - which is great for people to tinker with electronics old and new. It's where we draw the line on what a community deems acceptable or not, which is a gray area at best. It took a skilled person a few days to build this, anyone with enough gumption could build it again.

 

[hkzlab]

One thing that sticks out to me is that the barrier to entry for RE and manufacturing is historically low and access to information historically high - which is great for people to tinker with electronics old and new. It's where we draw the line on what a community deems acceptable or not, which is a gray area at best. It took a skilled person a few days to build this, anyone with enough gumption could build it again.

Indeed, I'm quite sure I've seen clones of the device floating around facebook one or two years ago, so someone already did, but kept quiet about it!

I think that the few days that it took me to rebuild the device could have been cut in half if I decided to just provide the original bootloader with the PCB and be done with it.

I actually spent some time updating the bootloader of the 2012 version to get it to work with the new board and OLED, but fundamentally, for someone that just wanted to profit from cloning the board, this would have not been necessary at all.

But hey, I don't even sell MY projects, i just release them

 

[MacEffects]

I was quite disappointed when I read this but I am quite happy that ownership for this is being taken and apologies are offered. Sometimes we do make the mistake of doing something and not thinking if we should. We are all human. I’m glad a respectful outcome has been achieved.

 

[Stinkerton18]

I may be stepping on a landmine here but honestly, it merits asking the question/posing the option since literally no one else seems to have either thought of or remarked on another seemingly obvious option: Licensing. So I'll just ask directly.

@bigmessowires, if I/any individual non-corporate/non-reseller entity built a non-BMOW designed Floppy Emu, could I buy a license for the firmware from you, understanding/signing a license agreement that (likely at a minimum):

• Said license is per device (meaning I'd have to buy one for each F.O. I built)
• Said license is non-transferable (meaning I can't give it away if I stop using my device/destroy it/etc.)
• Said license is limited to software support and does not provide any kind of hardware support
• Said license can be revoked (preferably for specific reasons and not "just because")
• Said license does not guarantee access to future enhancements or features that require hardware capabilities that may/may not be present on anything other than the official BMOW Floppy Emu
• Said license does not permit the sharing/posting/reposting of the firmware or license key/file anywhere for any reason

The CLPD being end of life is what brings this to the forefront of my mind of considering other avenues to:

1. Continue supporting you for your work/efforts into the Floppy Emu
2. Have a more "hands on"/tinkerer option for those who want such a thing
3. Help ensure licensed/sanctioned Floppy Emus continue to be available
4. People in any country have some avenue to obtain a sanctioned Floppy Emu even when shipping/import charges make obtaining the official device from the official store prohibitedly expensive

I'm sure you've already been planning a road map for when the supply of CLPDs is exhausted but the whole discussion to this point just had me think ¿Por qué no los dos? Businesses have been using this model for decades for computer software. A lot of hardware manufacturers (Big IP Networks, ARRIS/CommScope, Cisco, etc.) have started migrating this way with software/firmware that was once available only with the device they manufactured, and now being available as an installable software package or VM image.

 

[Tashtari]

@hkzlab Thank you for doing the right thing. As @MacEffects said, we're all human - the important thing is not that we never make mistakes, but that we correct them where and how we can. On which note, I apologize if my defense of BMOW was overzealous at times - it wasn't my intention to accuse you of malicious intent, but I can see how my posts might have been taken that way.

Really, what offended me most was not the project itself but the willingness of some in the community (not necessarily on this forum thread) to go to lengths to rationalize why exploiting it should be considered acceptable. I hope those people reconsider their positions as @hkzlab did.

 

[MacEffects]

On which note, I apologize if my defense of BMOW was overzealous at times - it wasn't my intention to accuse you of malicious intent, but I can see how my posts might have been taken that way.

Totally understandable to want to defend a creator and friend in the community. I don’t know that many could fault that. So many times good creators give up because of drama. So, the less drama the better. And I’m glad things worked out as well as they have here.

 

[zigzagjoe]

@hkzlab I would also like to thank you for doing the right thing and apologize for assuming the worst of your motivations.

As an explanation (not an excuse), as you've seen, scenarios like this can be the thing of nightmares for folks like myself that make hardware for vintage machines. Loose play with other's designs has been a reoccurring pattern in some other vintage computing communities; seeing it close to home hit something of a sore spot, aggrevated by the apparent positive reception as Tashtari mentioned. I'm afraid that prompted me into an immediately hostile response, and for that, I'm sorry.

Looking forward to your future contributions