The difference is that as far as I can recall there weren't people trying to pass off open source as someone else's proprietary software. You didn't think you were buying a copy of Oracle's DB or Microsoft Office and actually get a wrapper around MySQL or a restyled Open Office.
You choose whether your wanted the propriety program or the open source program, fully aware that they were different programs with different abilities, features, limitations, and bugs. You could compare them and decide which suits your needs better and then reliably obtain that one.
With hardware the fakes are being sold as the genuine part. You really don't know what you are getting and really don't know if it follows the spec. You might for example think you are buying a 3.3 V microcontroller that has 5 V tolerant input pins (meaning you can hook it straight up to a 5 V sensor you are using), but the fake is not 5 V tolerant and won't work for you unless you add a level shifter to your design.
There was an article submitted to HN nearly a year ago [1] about fake/counterfeit DS18B20 temperature sensors. That article gives a good look at all the different kind of chips you might end up with when you think you are buying a DS18B20, with lots of details on how they differ from the real ones.
You choose whether your wanted the propriety program or the open source program, fully aware that they were different programs with different abilities, features, limitations, and bugs. You could compare them and decide which suits your needs better and then reliably obtain that one.
With hardware the fakes are being sold as the genuine part. You really don't know what you are getting and really don't know if it follows the spec. You might for example think you are buying a 3.3 V microcontroller that has 5 V tolerant input pins (meaning you can hook it straight up to a 5 V sensor you are using), but the fake is not 5 V tolerant and won't work for you unless you add a level shifter to your design.
There was an article submitted to HN nearly a year ago [1] about fake/counterfeit DS18B20 temperature sensors. That article gives a good look at all the different kind of chips you might end up with when you think you are buying a DS18B20, with lots of details on how they differ from the real ones.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23815839