It's nothing different from other European countries. For example, Russia itself long time ago lost its old capital, Kiev, to invaders from Poland and Lithuania. Stuff like that will keep happening until concept of nationality and national state is fully obsolete.

You're very naive if you think that USSR's communist party was unified. Only on paper maybe.

I don't see a problem here. But oil overall oil will deplete soon enough and the best alternative is solar IMO. You can draw large amounts of power with solar panels alone, probably enough for a computer.

Is there even any difference between republicans and democrats anymore? They both are merely vehicles though which companies rule US, communicating their desires via lobbies backed with contributions. They're like old USSR communist party, only instead of one "party of power" they made two.

that the biggest part of their entertainment value is in cracking the DRM.

Other people would be even less interested in working on it for free than you so my point stands.

Well, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever then. It is obvious that any current contributors would be most interested in working on it future, more than any other potential contributor. In fact, OP said that he's going to continue his work in this very thread thus answering my question. His issue was loss of company support due to him no longer working there.

Who? Potential contributors they're looking for you mean? Your reply is in wrong place then.

You gotta be kidding. Prison for life just for network intrusion? Most murders would warrant less than that. It's just another over the top law, like anti-blasphemy in Islam countries. No place for them in this century. Punishment must be according to the crime, and there's no way you could do something deserving a life sentence using computer hacking alone.

Even if it's illegal, counterfeiting isn't a term applicable here. It's violation of USB spec, nothing more. Counterfeiting involves deceit by definition, but device vendors definitely knew they're getting not an FTDI device but a replacement that can serve same function.

It's the other way around. Driver doesn't support those non-FTDI devices. Those non-FTDI devices support the driver.

And how this applies to this particular situation? I just don't see. Emulating another device's interface is done all the time for sake of interoperability.

Was there even counterfeiting? If they just made own chips with the same interface then it's not counterfeiting. At most violation of USB spec, maybe not even that. TFA doesn't provide much details about this.

All of them? Not a single free day to maintain a project they could maintain while they had jobs? Unlikely.

Wouldn't a retired person have a lot of time on their hands to contribute to the project? Or it's customary in your country for all people at retirement age to perform ritual suicide?