Also, I remember the "FTDI-gate" with the ch340, where FTDI updated their driver to break ch340 clones (that are nearly ubiquitous and sometimes indistinguishable).
Can't remember how that ended.
Can't remember how that ended.
It presents its own interface to the computer and uses its own drivers.
What FTDI did was specifically targeted against fake FTDI chips. Note that this is no less horrible; FTDI has no business intentionally bricking anybody's chips.
USB devices have a vendor/product ID that is used for driver selection. The ones for the FTDI and ch340 are different:
If you want existing drivers to "just work" with your clone device[1] then you need to return a vendor and product id it already recognizes. Lying to a computer does not make you a counterfeiter (and copying responses verbatim for interoperability purposes is pretty strongly protected, see e.g. Sega v. Accolade)
[1]: After all the whole point of making an FTDI clone instead of just implementing the standard USB communications device class was to get Windows support before Windows 10 introduced support for serial via CDC out-of-the-box.