Arduino vs. Arduino

[Richard Crowley]

HackAday is reporting that there is serious infighting in the Arduino camp.

Arduino LLC is suing Arduino Srl (the Italian version of an LLC). Sounds confusing? It gets juicier. What follows is a summary of the situation as we learned it from this article at MakeMagazin.de (google translatrix)

Arduino LLC is the company founded by [Massimo Banzi], [David Cuartielles], [David Mellis], [Tom Igoe] and [Gianluca Martino] in 2009 and is the owner of the Arduino trademark and gave us the designs, software, and community support that’s gotten the Arduino where it is. The boards were manufactured by a spinoff company, Smart Projects Srl, founded by the same [Gianluca Martino]. So far, so good.

Things got ugly in November when [Martino] and new CEO [Federico Musto] renamed Smart Projects to Arduino Srl and registered arduino.org (which is arguably a better domain name than the old arduino.cc). Whether or not this is a trademark infringement is waiting to be heard in the Massachussetts District Court.

According to this Italian Wired article, the cause of the split is that [Banzi] and the other three wanted to internationalize the brand and license production to other firms freely, while [Martino] and [Musto] at the company formerly known as Smart Projects want to list on the stock market and keep all production strictly in the Italian factory.

Naturally, a lot of the original Arduino’s Open Source Hardware credentials and ethos are hanging in the balance, not to mention its supply chain and dealer relationships. However the trademark suit comes out, we’re guessing it’s only going to be the first in a series of struggles. Get ready for the Arduino wars.

We’re not sure if this schism is at all related to the not-quite-open-source hardware design of the Yun, but it’s surely the case that the company is / the companies are going through some growing pains right now.
http://hackaday.com/2015/02/25/arduino-v-arduino/

[dannyf]

From my perspective, Arduino is good due to the availability of cheap boards + shields. The first thing I do with my arduino is to blow out the arduino firmware.

[retrolefty]

Might not really matter. The Asian knock-offs have kind of commoditize the brand name. Hard to see how the 'brand' could continue long term profitable with the open sourced hardware/software roots of the product family.

 

[free_electron]

another makerbot ...

lets start with open sauce then try to monetize it and it ends up being taken off open source ...
and then the whole cat and dog world comes crashing down.


one more reason not touch touch open source stuff. even with a 6 month old dead fish ...

[SL4P]

...even with a 6 month old dead fish ...

Hmm.  Maybe an opportunity for  a crowd-funded money-maker!

[Mr.B]

From my perspective, Arduino is good due to the availability of cheap boards + shields. The first thing I do with my arduino is to blow out the arduino firmware.

+1
Me too.

[donotdespisethesnake]

Similar schisms happened to thousands of closed source companies - founders want to go different directions, sue each other, so the Open Source angle is a red herring in that respect. Both Arduino factions agree the brand is valuable, the difference is how to capitalize on it.

With a closed source company, such a dispute can lead to the whole lot disappearing. People are left with hardware with no specs, software with no support or updates.  Whatever happens with Arduino, the software and hardware will continue with third parties, whether commercial or non-profit.

The support from Arduino is pretty minimal as it is, it's quite likely a community edition could provide a better job of that.

[westfw]

[want to] keep all production strictly in the Italian factory

Well, that seems pretty much a lost cause.  Even not counting China's clones (and derivatives), there are already a lot of other people manufacturing "authorized" Arduino boards.   Perhaps there is more going on behind-the-scenes (with Arduino Zero?) than we are aware of.

(Otherwise, I'm with Snake.  This is not-very-unusual growing pains for this class of company, OS or otherwise.)

it's quite likely a community edition could provide a better job [support]

I disagree, and I claim that the (many!) hobbyist boards similar or superior in capabilities and quality of initial software that have failed to continue to advance, despite OS and "community support."  ("Wiring" itself being a good example.  But also USB Bitwhacker, Maple, Sanguino, and a huge variety of vendor-subsidized development boards (butterfly, STM32 Primer, Assorted NXP Expresso, Assorted microchip boards, etc.)  It seems to take a large group of people, or a large amount of fanaticism, to make a
community project last longer than the average year-or-two attention span of an underemployed hacker.

[Mechatrommer]

too late my friend too late... the clone war has already begun long time ago, now its time the jedi are to be crushed, china empire will rise and the rebellions will come up with better ide and avr fw...

[mazurov]

Seems like Arduino project has good chance of detaching from the founders, which is excellent - just take a look at recent development activity.

[photon]

FYI, open source is not going anywhere. In the 90's pundits affirmed that UNIX was dead. Didn't happen. The embedded world today runs on LINUX/GNU/ARM. The reasons are: cost, quality universality.

[donotdespisethesnake]

This is fun, there are now two Arduinos, arduino.cc and arduino.org.

arduino.org have launched the "Arduino Zero Pro" with software support in their version of the IDE, while arduino.cc have not.

arduino.cc Zero



Arduino.org Zero Pro




What a pretty mess!

[donotdespisethesnake]

it's quite likely a community edition could provide a better job [support]

I disagree, and I claim that the (many!) hobbyist boards similar or superior in capabilities and quality of initial software that have failed to continue to advance, despite OS and "community support."  ("Wiring" itself being a good example.  But also USB Bitwhacker, Maple, Sanguino, and a huge variety of vendor-subsidized development boards (butterfly, STM32 Primer, Assorted NXP Expresso, Assorted microchip boards, etc.)  It seems to take a large group of people, or a large amount of fanaticism, to make a
community project last longer than the average year-or-two attention span of an underemployed hacker.

You may well be right. I think gaining a critical mass and proper leadership are both required for success.

The reason that I say another party could provide better support, is that arduino Sa could hardly do worse. There are currently 835 open issues on Arduino in github, and 139 outstanding pull requests. There are issues over 5 years old imported from the previous bug tracker, some of which have fixes that have never been applied. There is rarely any official response to queries/suggestions, nearly all the support effort is from volunteers, even on the dev list. 

I would give Paul Stoffregen control of the Arduino IDE and see what he can do with that. As for the hardware design, there are quite a few good EE who could take care of that, perhaps yourself included?

[zapta]

This is fun, there are now two Arduinos, arduino.cc and arduino.org.

arduino.org have launched the "Arduino Zero Pro" with software support in their version of the IDE, while arduino.cc have not.

arduino.cc Zero



Arduino.org Zero Pro




What a pretty mess!

These boards are not open source, right?  (some proprietary debugger firmware, just like the latest teensy).

[ataradov]

Debugger implements a standard CMSIS-DAP, so while proprietary, it implements a standard and a well-documented protocol. The debugger chip is sold by Atmel as a finished "black box" product, so you are not even supposed to know that it has firmware.

My simple command line utility (https://github.com/ataradov/embedded/tree/master/edbg) can program this board from Linux and Windows.

[donotdespisethesnake]

These boards are not open source, right?  (some proprietary debugger firmware, just like the latest teensy).

I think you are right, the Atmel EDBG firmware is closed. It's funny how Atmel PR bang on about Open Source all day but the one little thing they do for OSHW is closed. Idiots!

The Zero seems overpriced as well, it costs more than a Due.

[ataradov]

I think you are right, the Atmel EDBG firmware is closed.

Same goes for the FTDI chip firmware, and no one complains about that.

[gildasd]

another makerbot ...

lets start with open sauce then try to monetize it and it ends up being taken off open source ...
and then the whole cat and dog world comes crashing down.


one more reason not touch touch open source stuff. even with a 6 month old dead fish ...

Stop bashing Dutch cuisine! Harring is never that old, even if it smells like it.

[Monkeh]

I think you are right, the Atmel EDBG firmware is closed.

Same goes for the FTDI chip firmware, and no one complains about that.

With FTDI you have alternatives.

Where's the alternative for this?

[ataradov]

Any SWD programmer? There are dozens of them, every ARM chip manufacturer has one and they all support CMSIS-DAP interface and have the same pinout. Thanks to ARM for straightening all that programmers mess.

Standard ARM programming connector is present on both boards.

BTW, the same EDBG chip is also used in all new standalone Atmel programmers. And this is essentially the same thing as ST-Link that ST puts on their development boards. And it is the same as TI's version.

[Monkeh]

Any SWD programmer? There are dozens of them, every ARM chip manufacturer has one and they all support CMSIS-DAP interface and have the same pinout. Thanks to ARM for straightening all that programmers mess.

Standard ARM programming connector is present on both boards.

With no support for any vendor commands, or AVRs.

BTW, the same EDBG chip is also used in all new standalone Atmel programmers. And this is essentially the same thing as ST-Link that ST puts on their development boards. And it is the same as TI's version.

And TI, at least, have open source options.

[ataradov]

We are talking about ARM board, why AVRs are even here?

There are no significant vendor commands. The only vendor commands (at least publicly documented) are commands to get board information, which are not important at all for real development.

[Coliban]

FYI, open source is not going anywhere. In the 90's pundits affirmed that UNIX was dead. Didn't happen. The embedded world today runs on LINUX/GNU/ARM. The reasons are: cost, quality universality.

Agreed. But don´t forget the Mac OSX world (which might be a magnitude bigger), which is also based on Unix (not only linux is based on Unix). Seems that Unix will never die...

[donotdespisethesnake]

We are talking about ARM board, why AVRs are even here?

There are no significant vendor commands. The only vendor commands (at least publicly documented) are commands to get board information, which are not important at all for real development.

I don't know why the Open Source concept is so hard for some people to grasp. I guess it is down to decades of brainwashing that things must always be owned by someone, and now people can't conceive of any other system.

I liken Open Source to vegetarian food. If something is described as vegetarian, then it should contain no meat. It's really simple. In the same way, if an Open Source design has a programmable chip, the firmware must be open source.

What you are saying is "it only contains a little meat, you can hardly taste it, so can't we still call it vegetarian?". Obviously, no.

Mind you, I have met a few people who can't grasp the idea of vegetarian food either.

Note, we are not telling Arduino that their products must be Open Source, they are telling us that their products are Open Source. It's entirely their choice. But it's misleading and stupid to put an Open Source label on something that is not Open Source, in the same way it is misleading and stupid to put "suitable for vegetarians" on a recipe that contains meat.

[zapta]

Agreed. But don´t forget the Mac OSX world (which might be a magnitude bigger), which is also based on Unix..

. . and Android.