The T1/Fake Tealio/Koalas, I guess Ride Never Ends

Well, you need to look at the contacts. Are the contacts corroded? If they are, a cleaning might help. If they aren’t, the leaf might’ve broken off (happened to me with a NIU Mini i bought off someone + my KBP v60 with Matias Clicky)

I suppose that involves opening up the switch? What would I use to clean it? Alcohol? It just seems odd that this same problem has happened with only these two boards out of about 20

I rather like the T1s I received from the limited ordered KBDFans accepted. I’m thinking of doing a GB for the OEM version of the T1s from the Durock company in China, but I’d like to know all the facts before I do that so I can judge for myself the ethics of purchasing from that seller. The most important and first things to consider is: Who owns the design and who owns the molds? Then we can judge the ethics of purchasing the currently available T1 switches based on these answers.

  1. Who designed the T1 switch? I heard it was mostly Durock. If Durock designed it, then they should be able to sell it. This is answered in my analysis below.

  2. Who owns the molds from which they were initially printed? It’s hard to parse the answer for this question from the KBDFans statement on their website [1], but it sounds like there was a mold that someone owns. Looks like it was a former employee of Gateron named “Zhi”.

    a) “I have these three sets of moulds proprietary rights. The hardware parts of the switches body were directly purchased by Dongxuan Li, from the original hardware supplier of Gateron…”

    b) “I began to sell the fake GATERON Zeal switches to Yeeke peripheral KBDfans at a lower price at the end of September 2018. KBDfans did not know that the product was fake.” (It’s not clear from this whether these switches were physically labeled as “ZealPC” on the switches - does anyone here know? Also, it’s not clear why he did this. Presumably it’s to make lots of money from the keyboard enthusiasts market, but he previously worked for Gateron, so I expect him to be familiar with the quality of this plan (very poor). I think he’s not a dumb person, which brings me back to the question of why.)

    c) “Later, KBDfans and I used the logo of KBDfans to develop the black transparant T1 panda switches” (Sounds like KDBFans has zero ownership of the switch design or molds, so it’s likely the case that Zhi, the author of this post and owner of the molds, decided that selling this switch labelled as “ZealPC” was a bad idea and wanted to “become legit”, and having KDBFans brand on it and their promotions would be great for sales.)

    d) “Now the fake Zeal switches has been revealed, … I also took the initiative to negotiate the transfer of moulds with Gateron and KBDfans.”

    e) “However, the moulds transfer was not smooth. … At the last moment, Dongxuan Li repented. He retained part of the mould and refused to transfer it all. … Now, my survey investigation found that Dongxuan Li used my mould to make low cheap products and sold them in the market (no logo or other logo).” (These “low-end, cheap products” refer to Durock’s switches, I believe.)

    f) “As the owner of the mould, I will continue to investigate the legal liability of the sellers. I hope that the customized merchants and players will not buy the switches from Dongxuan Li, or they will face the corresponding legal liability. After investigation, Durock of Shenzhen Deyan Technology Co., Ltd. has already sold the products made by our moulds on the internet.” (I haven’t seen any updates from Zhi on this repossession of his molds. It’s possible that Zhi has an agreement with Dongxuan Li and Durock to receive royalties on their switch sales. Does anyone have a more recent update from Zhi on this case?)

Update: I was linked this zFrontier page [2] in Chinese which looks like it’s written by someone involved with the purchase, sale, or use of the mold.

[1] https://kbdfans.cn/blogs/news/article
[2] zFrontier 装备前线

But why?

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I agree @dwarflemur, it’s not really worth stirring the pot of this mess again IMHO.

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I still don’t understand what the controversy was about. It’s not right to just walk away from something which has controversy surrounding it. It’s better to discover the facts and lay them out for people to use to judge. I haven’t found a place which lays out the facts, so I’m attempting to do that here. How is this stirring the pot?

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I started this thread.

Because of another group buy for these switches.

Which failed.

Just, just don’t waste your time.

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Yeah, not worth it.
Backstabber rattling about getting backstabbed.
Screw them all cuz I prefer screwed-in stabs.

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It’s just that none of us have the facts and those who do (the ones involved in the controversy) aren’t going to share more than they already have.

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There are so many other switches out there. It’s not like there’s a lack of good options and there was nothing particularly great about these ones.

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exactly this. If and when we find out what really happened, it wont be because of any additional digging being done. It will be more information is revealed to us, not by us.

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Everything we know is based on either testimony or educated guesses based on what we have right now. Like, we can guess all we want that Everglide, Geekmaker Creamy, and Fake Tealios are all made by the same manufacturer, but there’s only stuff that we can guess at, and not anything we can prove. But what we can ascertain doesn’t exactly paint a reputable picture, so avoiding Durock is most likely the best option for right now.

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The controversy was that T1s & Stealios were made by the same manufacturer & guided behind the scenes by the same person (also very likely they both had molds in common). Do you want to do business with a factory or someone that represents one that is already known to be shady AF & have no qualms about counterfeiting? I get it, you like the switches & thought they could still be salvaged without resurrecting the BS surrounding them, but that is just not the case. As @Lesbian stated this thread is pretty much in response to a failed GB for T1s after the shit hit the fan about Stealios, the community just doesn’t want anything to do with that manufacturer or anybody who had a hand in the Stealios being made.

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the ride never ends indeed

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This was the first GB I joined and it got cancelled :rofl:

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:popcorn:

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People on the GeekHack IC thread are arguing that supporting counterfeiters isn’t a bad thing for some reason. :man_facepalming:

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“Well, OBVIOUSLY I don’t support their counterfeiting work, but I don’t see how that has anything to do with their other work” sure is some kind of take they’ve got

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I saw that, my favorite was the “I could care less if they are made by thieves, if they’re good switches who cares” take.

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My favorite part of this is that they aren’t even that great of switches lmao

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