More headaches for Arduino (this time, it's personal!)

[madires]

I doubt that there's a viable market for a premium Arduino. The most common approach to monetize OSS/OSHW is to provide service to businesses. Are there any companies worth mentioning using Arduinos in their products?

[CJay]

I doubt that there's a viable market for a premium Arduino. The most common approch to monetize OSS/OSHW is to provide service to businesses. Are there any companies worth mentioning using Arduinos in their products?

I doubt it, I think commercial use was specifically prohibited in their licence wasn't it?

It may be they progress to a model like Redhat where the product is still, notionally' free but support is the revenue stream.

But to do that they'd need take up from industry and Arduino is seen as a hobbyist/maker/hacker product, not an easy image to get rid of and an almost impossible sell into industry I'd think.

[Cerebus]

It was an item on their site around the time of the first real grumblings about misuse of 'arduino' branding, I've only a vague memory as to the wording as I don't particularly care about Arduino Foundation and dislike the IDE rather a lot but I read it as a fairly unambiguous 'threat' to make it a paid for product if they didn't get more people paying them for 'official' products.

To be fair I think the appeal was more along the lines of "C'mon, at least some of you please buy some original Arduino branded products instead of just clones and give us a bit of money to keep the whole thing rolling or we'll have to move to a more closed model just to stay in business." [Not a real quote. Some scenes have been re-created for dramatic purposes.]

It's all a question of how you spin it, and as soon as you're into the region where people are putting a spin on things then it gets into "winning/loosing territory" instead of "simply succeeding territory" and perforce someone's going to lose out.

[Cerebus]

I doubt it, I think commercial use was specifically prohibited in their licence wasn't it?

I think the common license for all the early Arduino stuff was https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ which explicitly permits commercial re-use. That's certainly the license for the Nano schematics and manual, and I can't be arsed to pull from backup, unzip and search similar age IDE source to check what's in there - mea culpa - but if that license was in use in 2008 for the schematics then I'd be surprised if there wasn't an, at least broadly similar, licence on the firmware and IDE.

[If anybody noticed the edits there, sorry I seem to be having an arse/elbow discrimination PEBKAC.]

[janoc]

Guys, the license of the schematics of the boards and the board design files is pretty much a completely irrelevant red herring. It covers only those files (i.e. their distribution/reproduction), not the concept of the board itself. For that they would have to have a patent, which is, AFAIK, not the case.

So I can take an Uno/Nano/whatever, reverse engineer the board, measure the dimensions (or even use the original design files!) and start producing my own copies and nobody could do squat if I don't call them "Arduino" - because that they have trademarked (and are enforcing). That is what makes all those clones legal, not some Creative Commons or whatever logo plastered on the genuine boards.

The Arduino IDE is under GPL (https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/blob/master/license.txt), so if someone tried to close it, they can't. If Arduino itself tried to relicense it (assuming they get the OK of all copyright holders), then all that would happen is someone taking the last GPL version and forking it, potentially driving the "official" version into irrelevance. There is a recent history of that too (the legal spat between the US and Italian Arduinos).

[donotdespisethesnake]

People have been speculating about Arduino's business model, and that they will probably have to go closed source, for about 10 years. Apart from some unfounded hearsay, and a few missing design files which virtually no-one cares about, there is no indication that Arduino are planning any such move. It is remarkable that they have stayed open, and not sold out like Makerbot, even with all the Arduino clones, but a few Open Source companies are managing to do it. Arduino have revenue apart from hardware sales, so I think they manage to keep afloat.

I'll wait until there is some actual evidence that Arduino are going closed source, before bothering to worry about that...

Adafruit's goal is to put pressure on Arduino and somehow force out Federico Musto, because they have taken a dislike to Musto. Bitching about missing design files, and some vague promised Foundation, that no one cares about, are not going to achieve that. So I guess Adafruit will be bitching about Arduino for a long time!

[janoc]

Adafruit's goal is to put pressure on Arduino and somehow force out Federico Musto, because they have taken a dislike to Musto. Bitching about missing design files, and some vague promised Foundation, that no one cares about, are not going to achieve that. So I guess Adafruit will be bitching about Arduino for a long time!

I didn't know you were an appointed spokesman of Adafruit. All this is only your speculation based on one *reposted* (i.e. NOT written by Adafruit staffers) article from Make. Are you trying to stir up a storm in a teacup?

[FrankBuss]

I don't like to use the term "snowflake"... but there is a lot of shit that goes on in business that is far worse than lying about credentials...

At least in Germany it is quite serious. For example, the German defense minister resigned, because it was discovered that he copied and pasted lots of text for his PhD thesis without marking it as citations. And I think this was right. How can you be sure that such a person doesn't lie about other things as well?

[igendel]

Adafruit's goal is to put pressure on Arduino and somehow force out Federico Musto, because they have taken a dislike to Musto.

When the Arduino cc/org fight broke out, the general opinion seemed to be that Musto was the bad guy, no? Even without the matter of fake credentials, who would want the bad guy to be in charge of anything now?

[donotdespisethesnake]

Adafruit's goal is to put pressure on Arduino and somehow force out Federico Musto, because they have taken a dislike to Musto. Bitching about missing design files, and some vague promised Foundation, that no one cares about, are not going to achieve that. So I guess Adafruit will be bitching about Arduino for a long time!

I didn't know you were an appointed spokesman of Adafruit. All this is only your speculation based on one *reposted* (i.e. NOT written by Adafruit staffers) article from Make. Are you trying to stir up a storm in a teacup?

Adafruit created the "#FreeArduino" campaign, they have made numerous references to it. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FreeArduino Every cause finds "useful idiots" to support them, and Adafruit are finding a few.

So far, they have not openly put their name to calls for Musto to go, maintaining plausible deniability, but are reposted/retweeting everyone else who calls for that.

adafruit industries? Verified account @adafruit Jun 12

Arduino's "arm's-length" foundation & lies ...

 Brian Fitzgerald? @brianfit Jun 12

Arduino's struggle to rid itself of a self-serving opportunist ...

The quote from Wired seems genuine :

https://www.wired.com/2017/04/arduinos-new-ceo-federico-musto-may-fabricated-academic-record/

Torrone says that one of the reasons why he went to the press with the information about Musto’s credentials was precisely that: to defend the community.

To women in the maker movement, who are often accused of being fake geeks and frequently have their expertise questioned, Musto’s apparent lies are personal affronts. “When you go to MIT, there is always this murmur that they had to lower the standards for you,” Fried says. “And after you graduate, you get asked all the time if you were actually smart enough to have earned your credentials. It’s a little bit insane that this guy has gotten this far without ever being questioned.”

Torrone and Fried are principals at Adafruit. The #FreeArduino campaign was create by them. Torrone created the #FreeArduino logo (source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtW0y8lXcU4&feature=youtu.be&t=33m52s)

It's Adafruit that are trying to stir up a storm, but I am not falling for their BS! Nor are most others, it seems.

[donotdespisethesnake]

Adafruit's goal is to put pressure on Arduino and somehow force out Federico Musto, because they have taken a dislike to Musto.

When the Arduino cc/org fight broke out, the general opinion seemed to be that Musto was the bad guy, no? Even without the matter of fake credentials, who would want the bad guy to be in charge of anything now?

It's a good question. Unfortunately, a condition of the settlement between Arduino vs Arduino was that Musto has equal share of the new Arduino organisation. So if you want to get rid of Musto, you need to restart the Arduino vs Arduino war. There are a few people who don't like Arduino or Banzi or Musto, so I guess those are the people who would be happy to see a new Arduino fight.

Only problem, without a shareholding or other interest, all people outside Arduino can do is bitch. I learnt from the first Arduino vs Arduino, although there is on paper an "Arduino community", there are very few people actually willing to put any effort in to it, and even less willing to put money where their mouth is. For example, who would pay money to a foundation that maintains the Arduino IDE, if they are not even willing to donate money to Arduino to maintain it?

I've bought a few genuine Arduinos, I've contributed to Arduino development, but I've never donated money to them.

That are a lot of shit people in business. At the end of the day, if you don't like a company or its staff, don't do business with it. Simple as that. No one is forced to use Arduino.

[donotdespisethesnake]

I don't like to use the term "snowflake"... but there is a lot of shit that goes on in business that is far worse than lying about credentials...

At least in Germany it is quite serious. For example, the German defense minister resigned, because it was discovered that he copied and pasted lots of text for his PhD thesis without marking it as citations. And I think this was right. How can you be sure that such a person doesn't lie about other things as well?

That's different for a number of reasons. Arduino are not in Germany... A defense minister clearly has public responsibility. Directors of companies have responsibility to their shareholders, they don't have any obligation to the general public, although can be forced to step down if there is bad publicity for the company.

How can we be sure that anyone is not lying at any time, and has just never been caught out? It's quite to stretch to ask someone to step down because they "might" be lying about something, which we don't know. We can only address the lies as the occur. Musto has been caught lying about his degrees, and been forced to retract. If we find he is lying about something else, we can challenge him on that.

The only thing that could positively be done, is to fork the Arduino projects (hardware and software). But that would take money and effort, and bitching is free!

[LabSpokane]

I don't like to use the term "snowflake"... but there is a lot of shit that goes on in business that is far worse than lying about credentials...

At least in Germany it is quite serious. For example, the German defense minister resigned, because it was discovered that he copied and pasted lots of text for his PhD thesis without marking it as citations. And I think this was right. How can you be sure that such a person doesn't lie about other things as well?

That's different for a number of reasons. Arduino are not in Germany... A defense minister clearly has public responsibility. Directors of companies have responsibility to their shareholders, they don't have any obligation to the general public, although can be forced to step down if there is bad publicity for the company.

How can we be sure that anyone is not lying at any time, and has just never been caught out? It's quite to stretch to ask someone to step down because they "might" be lying about something, which we don't know. We can only address the lies as the occur. Musto has been caught lying about his degrees, and been forced to retract. If we find he is lying about something else, we can challenge him on that.

Past performance is indicative of future behavior - particularly when the bad actor is effectively remorseless.  I would not want to be in a high-dollar-amount, commercial relationship with such an individual. I'm sure Adafruit feels the same.

[LabSpokane]

The only thing that could positively be done, is to fork the Arduino projects (hardware and software). But that would take money and effort, and bitching is free!

This would require a policy reversal by the maker community, whose mantra is "all software must be free."  The effort to save the Arduino IDE will not be free and it's time for the community to come to terms with this. 

[janoc]

The only thing that could positively be done, is to fork the Arduino projects (hardware and software). But that would take money and effort, and bitching is free!

This would require a policy reversal by the maker community, whose mantra is "all software must be free."  The effort to save the Arduino IDE will not be free and it's time for the community to come to terms with this.

How did you arrive to this "all software must be free" meme? Especially when linked to the "maker" community, which rarely cares about software at all, with proprietary tools being widely used? Could you point to some source? Or is it only your personal view?

Are you conflating "makers" and the free software people (like GNU/FSF around Stallman, by chance? Those two groups have pretty much zero overlap in practice. And even Stallman speaks about "free" as in "freedom", not as in "beer", recognizing that labor isn't a free resource.

Moreover, Arduino certainly is free as in freedom already, considering it is GPL licensed. Any vendor or organization is free to pick it up and keep developing it farther, should the Arduino folks commit a corporate sepuku thanks to their infighting.

Whether that will be Sparkfun, Adafruit or someone else, even a group of volunteers, it doesn't matter. Maintaining that IDE is neither rocket science nor a huge amount of work. Much larger and more complex projects are volunteer run and maintained - and work just fine.

Come on, guys. I know that several of you don't hold Arduino and the "makers" in high regard for many reasons, but could we, please, stop piling up unsubstantiated bullshit like this here?

 

[EEVblog]

I'll wait until there is some actual evidence that Arduino are going closed source, before bothering to worry about that...

If you just looked at Arduino.org then you wouldn't think it's fully open hardware. Apart form throwing around the words "open source", there is zero mention of any license under which they are "open sourcing" their hardware like they used to do using Creative Commons.
The schematics are called "reference designs" and they are providing at least schematics, so it's almost certainly still legally possible to take any current new Arduino design and replicate it commercially. But it seems something has changed, as the lack of licenses and PCB source files for every product on Arduino.org can be nothing but deliberate.

[EEVblog]

The only thing that could positively be done, is to fork the Arduino projects (hardware and software).

The "forking" of the Arduino hardware has already been effectively done by all the cloners. Clones and variants would have to outnumber genuine Ardunino sales by at least 10:1, more likely 100:1.
The IDE has AFAIK support for anyone to write their own plugin for their own variant board, so that nail is already in the genuine Arduino hardware coffin.
This is why it doesn't really matter if they go closed source hardware or not, no one cares, they are almost all using the clones and new variants anyway.

[brucehoult]

The IDE has AFAIK support for anyone to write their own plugin for their own variant board, so that nail is already in the genuine Arduino hardware coffin.

Indeed. The IDE is an editor and a terminal and a bit of UI.

You can easily substitute at least:

- headers defining the various constants how you want them, mappings from Arduino pin numbers to your MCUs pin numbers etc.

- a compiler/assembler/linker for whatever instruction set you want.

- your own program to download/flash the board, using whatever interface, protocol etc you want

No problem to design your own ISA, implement your own soft CPU on an FPGA board, and make it work with the standard Arduino IDE and source libraries. Just give the end user a single URL to enter into the arduino IDE preferences, restart the IDE, and tell them to choose board type, interface, and programmer from the newly-updated menus.

Assuming you're capable of designing an ISA, CPU, making a gcc or llvm port for it etc.

Arduino compatibility is not the difficult part.

[LabSpokane]

The only thing that could positively be done, is to fork the Arduino projects (hardware and software). But that would take money and effort, and bitching is free!

This would require a policy reversal by the maker community, whose mantra is "all software must be free."  The effort to save the Arduino IDE will not be free and it's time for the community to come to terms with this.

How did you arrive to this "all software must be free" meme? Especially when linked to the "maker" community, which rarely cares about software at all, with proprietary tools being widely used? Could you point to some source? Or is it only your personal view?

Eagle and Saleae Logic have been through similar debacles recently as well.  And your statement that "makers rarely care(s) about software" is absolutely correct and is the root of the problem.  The 70's are long gone and the "do it in software or hardware" debate has gone the way of bell bottoms and leisure suits. 

Today, we all need both. Software matters and writing good software is hard enough and expensive enough that we all should care about it. 

Personally, I think that the concept of the Arduino IDE is absolutely brilliant for all the obvious reasons. It's a pity that the IDE has largely been left stagnant and that no attempt has been made to implement even a rudimentary debugger (aside from user serial statements). 

The problem with Arduino is that, as seems to be with most successful, free software, there is an initial spate of highly productive development that then stagnates as the initial development funds dwindle and volunteer developers inevitably drift away.  The piece of the Arduino platform that makes it all worth doing has no ongoing revenue associated with it to continue its rightfully-deserved development. 

We know the IDE can be forked, but forking without funding is a pointless exercise.  There will be no meaningful change until it is agreed by all that the software has true monetary value and is worth paying for.

I would even argue that the Arduino IDE could become an industry-standard for low-end micro controller development.  It may even be that already.  I use it in my projects for the simple reason that it is readily accessible to others. (Although the poorness of the IDE lack of a debugger is causing me enough grief to really rethink this)

[brucehoult]

I would even argue that the Arduino IDE could become an industry-standard for low-end micro controller development.  It may even be that already.  I use it in my projects for the simple reason that it is readily accessible to others. (Although the poorness of the IDE lack of a debugger is causing me enough grief to really rethink this)

The problem is probably that the ATMEGA328 in the original Arduinos doesn't support any kind of debugging interface at all if you're communicating via UART and programming using the bootloader. You have to switch the chip into another mode in which you need an external high voltage programmer.

Plenty of other chips in Arduinos these days support JTAG for example via the same USB link as the UART. But no opne has added that to the IDE. Yet. Wouldn't take a lot.

[janoc]

HAD has published a more balanced article on this subject, including comments from the Arduino heads (Banzi & Musto)

http://hackaday.com/2017/06/19/the-arduino-foundation-whats-up/

It just shows how much are people speculating and jumping the gun, throwing wild accusations left and right - and the Foundation doesn't even legally exist yet.

[janoc]

Eagle and Saleae Logic have been through similar debacles recently as well.  And your statement that "makers rarely care(s) about software" is absolutely correct and is the root of the problem.  The 70's are long gone and the "do it in software or hardware" debate has gone the way of bell bottoms and leisure suits. 

Today, we all need both. Software matters and writing good software is hard enough and expensive enough that we all should care about it. 

Of course software matters. That's not the point.

My point was that the "makers" rarely care whether the software if paid, free (as in beer) or free (as in freedom). They will use whatever they can get their hands on and it does the job. Many are happy to pay for the software too if the price is reasonable and they get good value for it - e.g. the Mach CNC software or the Simplify3D commercial slicer for 3D printing. The recent Eagle and Saleae debacles only show that most people aren't stupid and won't throw money out of the window when it goes out of their own pocket, that's all.

Personally, I think that the concept of the Arduino IDE is absolutely brilliant for all the obvious reasons. It's a pity that the IDE has largely been left stagnant and that no attempt has been made to implement even a rudimentary debugger (aside from user serial statements). 

AFAIK I have heard some musing about adding that but the main problem is that debugging on AVR requires proprietary tools and the debugging protocols are not documented by Atmel, so you must use their dongles/programmers. Also the IDE is multiplatform but Atmel doesn't support anything but Windows with their tooling. There are some OSS tools for the debugging (avrice), but it is not really for beginners and the tools don't really support everything. If Arduino switched to ARM, then it would be different, but the current ARM-based Arduino boards are not exactly taking over the world - expensive & difficult to develop for.

The problem with Arduino is that, as seems to be with most successful, free software, there is an initial spate of highly productive development that then stagnates as the initial development funds dwindle and volunteer developers inevitably drift away.  The piece of the Arduino platform that makes it all worth doing has no ongoing revenue associated with it to continue its rightfully-deserved development. 

I don't think this is the main issue. The IDE is a fork of the Processing IDE that is being actively developed. And there is also some clear progress visible in the IDE - e.g. the library manager. I think the issue is more that it is simply good enough for a beginner. If you need something more advanced, like debugger support, then you can probably handle Atmel Studio already and debug your Arduino code there. They actually provide tutorial for that. I don't think that competing with Visual Studio/Eclipse has ever been the objective of the Arduino/Processing IDE. It has always been to keep things as simple as possible to enable otherwise non technical users to work with it.

We know the IDE can be forked, but forking without funding is a pointless exercise.  There will be no meaningful change until it is agreed by all that the software has true monetary value and is worth paying for.

Then I wonder how do projects like GCC, Linux kernel, Wordpress, Mozilla and many others survive. Paying for software is not the only model that can be viable. And the Arduino IDE is far from the complexity of any of these projects, so it would be much easier to handle as e.g. a non-profit, with funding coming from both Arduino the company and external sources - donors, companies profiting from the ecosystem (Sparkfun, Adafruit, etc.). BTW, that's exactly what the Arduino Foundation is meant for.

The value of the project could well be in the installed base, community support and perhaps even driving up sales. Ok, that last one is a long shot in the case of Arduino, but it is exactly the reason why almost all vendors give away development tools today. If Arduino LLC kept developing the IDE, they have certainly not been doing it for charity, they are a for profit company.

[LabSpokane]

janoc,

If Arduino is to have a future, AVR surely isn't it. 

Larger projects like you mentioned seem to have the benefit of a very wide audience as well as corporate support on some level.

[mtdoc]

HAD has published a more balanced article on this subject, including comments from the Arduino heads (Banzi & Musto)

http://hackaday.com/2017/06/19/the-arduino-foundation-whats-up/

It just shows how much are people speculating and jumping the gun, throwing wild accusations left and right - and the Foundation doesn't even legally exist yet.

Good article. Thanks for posting.  My take:  Too many ego's and hurt feelings. And too much speculation.  Hopefully the Foundation will succeed and all the butt-hurts forgotten - which is what the article implies Banzi and Musto are trying to do.   I can see Limor's point but IMHO she needs to move on.  It's not helping anyone and if she pursues it she may risk damaging her business.  If, after a while, the Foundation fails to materialize or forms and fails - then there will be time to fork.

[donotdespisethesnake]

HAD has published a more balanced article on this subject, including comments from the Arduino heads (Banzi & Musto)

http://hackaday.com/2017/06/19/the-arduino-foundation-whats-up/

It just shows how much are people speculating and jumping the gun, throwing wild accusations left and right - and the Foundation doesn't even legally exist yet.

Good article. Thanks for posting.  My take:  Too many ego's and hurt feelings. And too much speculation.  Hopefully the Foundation will succeed and all the butt-hurts forgotten - which is what the article implies Banzi and Musto are trying to do.   I can see Limor's point but IMHO she needs to move on.  It's not helping anyone and if she pursues it she may risk damaging her business.  If, after a while, the Foundation fails to materialize or forms and fails - then there will be time to fork.

If there is one thing we learned about Arduino over the years, they are pretty slow to get things done. That shouldn't be a surprise, they are a pretty small organisation (revenue maybe $1 million or so?). They are not like Intel etc who can throw 10 engineers at any project they care to.

I noticed that Arduino have appointed Hernando Barragán to a senior position. If anyone has cause to have a beef with Arduino, it is him. It's funny that he, Banzi, Gianluca Martino and Musto have agreed to bury the hatchet and move forward, despite several years of a legal struggle, but Limor Fried and Adafruit have decided that they can't work with Musto, even though the Arduino situation doesn't seem to have any impact on Adafruit's products or business. Adafruit seem to be mostly selling their own Arduino clones and variants on the theme. Indeed, Adafruit seemed happy to do business with arduino.org when it was being run by Musto, but now that Limor Fried has been "personally affronted" everything has changed.

It seems clear that are Arduino are committed to the principle of Open Source, even if some of the practice is deficient. Adafruit are holding their feet to the fire, and that may lead to a better practice by Arduino. Certainly there have been grumbles over the years about missing design files from Arduino. I don't see how achieving "full compliance" is going to get rid of Musto though, it seems like a weak attempt to call a bluff that has not been made. Adafruit are going to have to get used to working with Musto, however much they dislike him.