13 ms·

Is Arduino no longer open-source?

358 points by ptorrone 9y ago

amenghra 9y ago
Also relevant: http://hackaday.com/2015/03/28/arduino-srl-to-distributors-were-the-real-arduino/ http://hackaday.com/2015/03/28/arduino-srl-to-distributors-w...
- Retr0spectrum 9y ago
  http://hackaday.com/2016/10/01/arduino-vs-arduino-arduino-won/ http://hackaday.com/2016/10/01/arduino-vs-arduino-arduino-wo...
knob 9y ago
Good questions on AdaFruit's side. I am interested in knowing what is the result of this inquiry.
boznz 9y ago
You cannot remove the open-Source from something that was previously open-source. I'm pretty sure its a one way street.
- njyx 9y ago
  Once you've licensed something as open-source and published, that version with that license will always be there. You could take a future private version of the thing (assuming no code contributions) and license that differently.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    Well, except that gratuitous licenses are (irrespective of their surface terms) revocable at will. Promissory estoppel may mitigate, in some way, the effect of such revocation against people who took action in reliance on a promise of nob-revocation before or without knowledge of the subsequent revocation, but it is far from clear that the Free version will always be free; license terms don't override the governing law. (Now if there is a Free version under a contracted-for rather than gratuitous license, that's a bit more secure, though there are ways that could go away, too.)
    - dpark 9y ago
      On what do you base this claim? If you grant rights to someone, in what legal way can you simply revoke those rights? Real question. I am not a lawyer, but would assume arbitrary revocation would essentially be a breach of contract. (But I guess it's not technically a contract since it's one sided?)
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > On what do you base this claim? The law governing licenses (of all kinds.) > If you grant rights to someone, in what legal way can you simply revoke those rights? If the grant is gratuitous (not contracted for) you generally have no legal obligation not to simply revoke those rights (it is exactly the same case as inviting someone into your house and then ejecting them when you decide they've worn out their welcome, which is also a case of gratuitous license.) > Real question. I am not a lawyer, but would assume arbitrary revocation would essentially be a breach of contract. Right, if there was a contract, then revocation inconsistent with its terms would generally be a breach, which would still least present a cause of action for damages and may permit an equitable remedy extending the license. Most F/OSS license scenarios are not contract licenses, and even when they are, publication with an offer of a license isn't a contract, the offer must be accepted without the offer having expired or having been revoked first for a contract to exist.
        dpark 9y ago
        Hmm. Is there some specific case law relevant here? I'm having trouble buying into the idea that an agreement can be unilaterally rescinded and the law doesn't care. If I agree that my neighbor can have 5 feet on my side of the property line in perpetuity and put the offer in writing, I can simply change my mind later and take it back?
        zaphar 9y ago
        IANAL but my understanding is that giving someone something is not the same as giving someone a license to use it. If you have your neighbor permission to use that five feet then yes you can revoke it. But if you instead gave your neighbor that 5 feet then you would not be able to revoke it. A key part of most open source licenses is that the author is not giving up ownership of the code. This is why many projects require a copyright reassignments for contributions to avoid being hamstrung by an author revoking their right to use that contribution sometime in the future.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    Wouldn't it have to be rebuilt from scratch? I thought that any program containing open-source code must also be entirely open-source, at least with most common licenses.
    - justin66 9y ago
      no. If you're the sole contributor and have copyright, you can relicense the code however you like. You can't travel back in time and relicense the prior versions so they're no longer open source, but you can certainly control how future versions are licensed. If you have copyright.
- hinfaits 9y ago
  I think is about new Arduino products not being open source. Source files for old Arduino products are still directly available.
thearn4 9y ago
I think the Arduino civil war is inevitably going to lead to ESP8266/NodeMCU boards taking over this market.
- anthony_franco 9y ago
  ESP32 development boards are also very impressive. And the prices are dropping every month. Can't wait to see that ecosystem evolve.
  - duskwuff 9y ago
    Same goes for STM32 (ARM Cortex-M) hardware. Actually, the prices have already basically hit rock bottom. :) You can get a STM32F103C8T6 (72 MHz, 20 KB RAM / 64 KB flash) on a development board for under $5, and a programmer/debugger for about the same price.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      ESP32 advantage is having 512 KB, back to the PC1512 days, just being multi-core and having network access. :)
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    I don't have any use for them, already enough side projects as it is, but the technical specifications of ESP32 are great. It is like having a PC1512 that fits on the pocket, there are already lots of programming languages that would fit on it.
  - fest 9y ago
    And Espressif got their act together this time and are working on a good and open-source SDK (ESP-IDF). I just tried it out this week to make battery powered wireless temperature and humidity sensors. Sleep current for the whole system is not that great (~80uA of which 40-50 are used by ESP32 module). However, the simplicity and ease of use outweigh having to charge the battery every 3 months (3Ah li-ion cell).
    - 9y ago
ArduinoGuy 9y ago
Philip Terrone (spouse of Limor Fried, founder of Adafruit, poster of the above link and this article link) is embarking on a back-room campaign to actively assassinate the character of the Arduino.org people (the .org people are associated with Dog Hunter). This isn't his first outing in this department. The .org people (Federico Musto) are different than the Arduino.cc people (Massimo Banzi). Terrone seem to have some sort of personal vendetta going on here causing him to repeatedly lash out at them and spread rumors. I don't know exactly why, but take this post in the broader context of what has been going on. I know people who have worked with Terrone. His reputation is not so great either, he is an arrogant dude. Further evidence of this fun campaign: In the article where Federico Musto is reported to have faked his background, it says at the bottom that Philip Terrone is the source of the tip about Musto's educational background (Link: https://www.wired.com/2017/04/arduinos-new-ceo-federico-musto-may-fabricated-academic-record/ https://www.wired.com/2017/04/arduinos-new-ceo-federico-must...). "With this evidence in hand, Fried and Torrone emailed Musto, who replied that it was a mistake, and that he would correct the matter. But his various internet bios kept citing the credentials. So the pair contacted the media." So take this post with a grain of salt, it is part of a smear campaign that Terrone is going about online.
- spot 9y ago
  sounds like you know what's going on, maybe you can answer the questions on the email? ps. it's only a smear campaign if the accusations are false.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    The accusation is "Arduino is no longer open source", but the "proof" is a mostly a few missing license files, with a few other incomplete source submissions. No change of licenses, no new bits without sources, nothing to really indicate an actual change instead of some minor oversights. I'm not familiar with the conflict, but this really looks like smearing at worst, and bad clickbait at best.
- simplehuman 9y ago
  Mm, your comments is unrelated to the issue being talked about in the email. I don't particularly care about who sent the email as much as the source code being available.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ajarmst 9y ago
My colleagues have developed a "spitting noise" ritual after any utterance of the word "Arduino" (<hock> ptui). As embedded developers attempting to teach others, they're not enamored of Arduino's burgeoning, and dominant, market of "people who want to do embedded development but not learn anything about embedded development" sucking up all the oxygen. I know, that's an oversimplification, but not as much of one as I could wish. I don't want to wish anyone ill, but the emergence and success of competitors that don't go so far out of the way to hide the complexity (and the need for good practice) of working with embedded systems and SBCs, wouldn't be such a bad addition to the ecosystem. (As one of two developers who actually fool around with Arduinos and Pis a fair bit (although I detest the Arduino dev environment and 'sketches'), I'm tired of all the vandalism and graffiti in my cubicle, TBH).
- StavrosK 9y ago
  I understand your point, but there is a good middle ground for people. As a software developer, I was amazed the first time I connected a LED to the RPi's GPIOs and made it blink with software. From that, I moved to an Arduino, with its Lego style shields, and to an ESP8266 and my own PCBs. I don't think the Arduino is just for people who don't want to learn anything about embedded. Those people exist, but it's good that they can do stuff with hardware without learning. The people who do want to learn, will learn faster with the Arduino ecosystem than without it. That said, the Dev environment sucks, PlatformIO all the way.
  - ajarmst 9y ago
    That's a fair point, (and +1 for PlatformIO). And that is sort of the argument I sometimes find myself making: the Arduino Hardware is delightful. It's the ecosystem that has emerged around hobbyists that is problematic. It may just be early teething pains of something that will become remarkable. But right now, we find ourselves spending a lot of time walking back bad habits and lack of understanding of fundamentals when students show up with "projects" that involve a "schematic" that is really just a photograph of a breadboard, and the introduction of complex parts without ever consulting a data sheet, based on random code just pulled down over the Internet. And I've seen commercial products that are at about the same level of quality. The problem may be that Arduino is too forgiving.
mungoid 9y ago
I started with arduino a few years ago as a hobby and loved it as an easy way to get into the field but lately I have been realizing how many terrible habits I've obtained by learning this way. It took me weeks to retrain my brain to prefer looking at schematics instead of the breadboard views and I'm still trying to learn atmel studio and directly programming chips. It's coming along but slowly. I still think arduino is a great way for interested people to break into electronics but there is no clear 'line in the sand' when they should stop learning that way
- swiley 9y ago
  Don't forget, avrgcc can generate hex files for atmel chips without dragging a whole IDE around.
  - davexunit 9y ago
    I'm a novice when it comes to Arduinos and stuff, but I second your suggestion for using the avrgcc toolchain instead of the Arduino IDE. I tinker with Arduinos and Arduino-likes that have the atmega32u4 chip with built-in USB controller, write the firmware in C with the LUFA library providing USB support, avrgcc to compile, and avrdude or dfu-programmer to flash.
- drewm1980 9y ago
  Maybe there should be a button that dumps out your project as .cpp files and a working Makefile... It's not hard to take your arduino source and figure out which #includes are being hidden from you, write your own Makefile, etc if you already know what you're doing, but if you don't know what you're doing and try to stick your Arduino code into gcc, you're trying to learn with something that started broken.
- TickleSteve 9y ago
  Do yourself a favour and just use 'make' and 'g++' directly, ignore the Arduino wrappers, they're just toys that hamper you after a while.
  - 9y ago
Squonk42 9y ago
The answer to the question if these products are open source, the answer is: no. Here is my blog post from more than 2 years ago regarding the status of the Arduino Yùn: http://www.wifi4things.com/arduino-yun-what-is-under-the-hood/ http://www.wifi4things.com/arduino-yun-what-is-under-the-hoo... And here is my clarification request on the Arduino forum, which is still unanswered: http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=187766.0 http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=187766.0
- pawadu 9y ago
  I would be interesting to know if this is due to their Kramer-vs-Kramer situation or it is simply their new policy.
- r3bl 9y ago
  I would say that the Betteridge's law of headlines has been proven once again by this thread, but this is no article and the headline here seems more click-baity than the actual subject line of the thread.
  - livingparadox 9y ago
    The answer to your parent comment's question is "no", but their question was the inverse of the post's title. So, this actually is an exception to Betteridge's law; the answer to the question is "yes, arduino is no longer open source".
Squonk42 9y ago
The answer to the question if these products are open source, the answer is: no. Here is my blog post from more than 2 years ago regarding the status of the Arduino Yùn: http://www.wifi4things.com/arduino-yun-what-is-under-the-hood/ http://www.wifi4things.com/arduino-yun-what-is-under-the-hoo... And here is my clarification request on the Arduino forum, which is still unanswered: http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=187766.0 http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=187766.0
madarco 9y ago
Having worked in the Open Hardware community for a while, I think the most important part is: PDFs are not considered design files https://www.oshwa.org/definition/ https://www.oshwa.org/definition/ If you apply this rule, you can exclude 90% of the "Open Source/Hardware" products on the market. Also 99% are missing a BOM (Bill Of Materials). That's like shipping an open source software without the config files, forcing the users to figure out the settings by reading the sources. Unless they are buying the pre-compiled binaries from the author.
- vog 9y ago
  > PDFs are not considered design files https://www.oshwa.org/definition/ https://www.oshwa.org/definition/ This is a very good point! BTW, in that sense most Creative Commons work is not "open source", either. For example, a typical Creative Commons video that is just released as webm or mp4 can only be remixed, but not improved upon - which would require access to the raw video material, raw audio material and the project file of the used video cut program. Same for CC music distributes just as mp3/flac/opus, you'll need the samples, notes, music cut program file, and so on. One notable exception are tracker files (mod, s3m, it, ...), and in some sense also the MIDI files (as long as you have access to all instruments).
  - jononor 9y ago
    The definition from OSHWA is tailored for hardware. OSI has the authorative for software. But yeah, music and graphics frequently also don't include the actual 'source' - just a rendered output. This is way better that having a propiatary license on the output, but does not fulfill the full potential. Some of it has to so with the tools and proceses, which frequently aren't really built to make collaborating on the source materials easy. And often the formats and tools used are proprietary. Freeware VSTs abound for instance...
    - iuguy 9y ago
      Perhaps a key difference is that OSHWA isn't authoritative. OSHWA are the FSF of hardware. As far as they're concerned, only their certification constitutes open hardware. Everyone else is wrong. Sound familiar? As someone else pointed out, a lot of people don't provide BOM files, including people who have OSHWA certified hardware.
awsometak 9y ago
What happens when a software is no longer opensource? If I am already using it and selling it to clients? Would I be allowed to use the versions which i got when it was opensource?
reacweb 9y ago
Creators do not like to follow rules. Avoidance of a bunch of nitpicks is probably the only way to motivate them. IMHO, it is not a war, just a childish fight that is mostly positive.
iuguy 9y ago
Hopefully I can provide a bit of insight on this, currently working on open hardware myself. OSHW certification is a self-certification process. Individual products are certified, not companies. What Torrone is doing is conflating Arduino the company (or foundation, or companies, or whatever it is this week, guys please stahp) and Arduino the product series, and individual Arduino products. He knows what he's doing, but in this email does it anyway. Perhaps for good cause, but it's what he's doing. There is no requirement for Arduino to certify all of it's hardware with OSHWA. In fact given the explosion of things-that-are-branded-arduino it would be unsurprising to see hardware that cannot be certified as open due to commercial agreements that override open licences. Whether this affects Arduino or not long term is a different matter but the Uno, Nano and Pro Mini are all still open. OSHWA is an attempt to define what constitutes Open Source Hardware and to define some (hopefully) sane defaults. It's the hardware equivalent of the FSF, and it's licence is the maker equivalent of the GPL. It is not the only fruit. My project[1] uses the V-USB library, which comes with an open licence[2]. The project is derived from another project, the digispark[3]. We're operating within the licence constraints, and consider our project to be open hardware (we're posting our board designs when we ship at the end of this month). To further complicate things, when Arduino uses the term Open Source it rarely clarifies what that means. It may be referring to the software stack. It might be (but probably isn't in this day and age) referring to new hardware. Either way, while it is right to pressure Arduino to clarify their position, I think it's unfair to mandate that every product they ever produce must comply with OSHWA's definition of Open Source Hardware, or that only OSHWA certified hardware can be considered "open hardware". [1] - https://hidiot.com/ https://hidiot.com/ [2] - https://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/license.html https://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/license.html [3] - https://digistump.com/ https://digistump.com/
- mch82 9y ago
  The OSHWA requirements for compatible open hardware licenses [1] seem to allow for permissive open source licenses, similar to Apache 2.0. Attribution may or may not be required. Derivative works are required to follow the terms of the original license, but there doesn't seem to be a default requirement "share-alike". [1]: https://www.oshwa.org/definition/ https://www.oshwa.org/definition/
lloydjatkinson 9y ago
Oh shut up, Mr Straw Man.
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  You'll need to come up with a better argument than that – it is absolutely the same attitude.
  - lloydjatkinson 9y ago
    It's absolutely not the same analogy in the slightest, its apples to oranges. I guess you got triggered at someone not liking arduino.
    - matthewmacleod 9y ago
      Again, please back off from the personal insults. "Arduinos are shit because the people who use them aren't real programmers" is the core of the argument there. Similarly, "PCs are shit because the people who use them aren't real programmers" is a poor argument. And we frequently see "Web applications are shit because the people who write them aren't real programmers", which is an equally poor response. There are no rules about what constitutes a 'real' programmer and a 'not real' programmer. Complaining that inexperienced people are entering a field because the barrier to entry has been lowered is stupid. Instead, we should be focussing on solving and problems that introduces: things like security, safety and scalability need to be made easier. Opening the field up is always a good thing.
      - watwut 9y ago
        > Opening the field up is always a good thing. It is not like the people who complain about these were born professional programmers. They were born babies and at some point as clueless as current inexperienced newbies. Just because someone perceived himself to be all knowing all the time does not mean that he was objectively all knowing from the day he was born. In all likelihood, it just means lack of self-awareness.
ejanus 9y ago
Adafruit is not as cool as one might expect. I was sourcing boards from them and my parcel got missing from courier company. I complained to them. Initially they tried to help but nothing came out of it. Guess what they did next ? My account with them was disabled . It almost knocked my little startup off the ground. I wrote mails but to no avail.
nerfhammer 9y ago
3/5 of the boards mentioned here have not actually been publicly released as far as I can tell (Primo, Star Otto, Star LCD).

358 points by ptorrone 9y ago

Also relevant: http://hackaday.com/2015/03/28/arduino-srl-to-distributors-were-the-real-arduino/ http://hackaday.com/2015/03/28/arduino-srl-to-distributors-w...

Retr0spectrum 9y ago
http://hackaday.com/2016/10/01/arduino-vs-arduino-arduino-won/ http://hackaday.com/2016/10/01/arduino-vs-arduino-arduino-wo...

knob 9y ago

Good questions on AdaFruit's side. I am interested in knowing what is the result of this inquiry.

boznz 9y ago

You cannot remove the open-Source from something that was previously open-source. I'm pretty sure its a one way street.

njyx 9y ago
Once you've licensed something as open-source and published, that version with that license will always be there. You could take a future private version of the thing (assuming no code contributions) and license that differently.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Well, except that gratuitous licenses are (irrespective of their surface terms) revocable at will. Promissory estoppel may mitigate, in some way, the effect of such revocation against people who took action in reliance on a promise of nob-revocation before or without knowledge of the subsequent revocation, but it is far from clear that the Free version will always be free; license terms don't override the governing law. (Now if there is a Free version under a contracted-for rather than gratuitous license, that's a bit more secure, though there are ways that could go away, too.)
  - dpark 9y ago
    On what do you base this claim? If you grant rights to someone, in what legal way can you simply revoke those rights? Real question. I am not a lawyer, but would assume arbitrary revocation would essentially be a breach of contract. (But I guess it's not technically a contract since it's one sided?)
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > On what do you base this claim? The law governing licenses (of all kinds.) > If you grant rights to someone, in what legal way can you simply revoke those rights? If the grant is gratuitous (not contracted for) you generally have no legal obligation not to simply revoke those rights (it is exactly the same case as inviting someone into your house and then ejecting them when you decide they've worn out their welcome, which is also a case of gratuitous license.) > Real question. I am not a lawyer, but would assume arbitrary revocation would essentially be a breach of contract. Right, if there was a contract, then revocation inconsistent with its terms would generally be a breach, which would still least present a cause of action for damages and may permit an equitable remedy extending the license. Most F/OSS license scenarios are not contract licenses, and even when they are, publication with an offer of a license isn't a contract, the offer must be accepted without the offer having expired or having been revoked first for a contract to exist.
      - dpark 9y ago
        Hmm. Is there some specific case law relevant here? I'm having trouble buying into the idea that an agreement can be unilaterally rescinded and the law doesn't care. If I agree that my neighbor can have 5 feet on my side of the property line in perpetuity and put the offer in writing, I can simply change my mind later and take it back?
        zaphar 9y ago
        IANAL but my understanding is that giving someone something is not the same as giving someone a license to use it. If you have your neighbor permission to use that five feet then yes you can revoke it. But if you instead gave your neighbor that 5 feet then you would not be able to revoke it. A key part of most open source licenses is that the author is not giving up ownership of the code. This is why many projects require a copyright reassignments for contributions to avoid being hamstrung by an author revoking their right to use that contribution sometime in the future.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  Wouldn't it have to be rebuilt from scratch? I thought that any program containing open-source code must also be entirely open-source, at least with most common licenses.
  - justin66 9y ago
    no. If you're the sole contributor and have copyright, you can relicense the code however you like. You can't travel back in time and relicense the prior versions so they're no longer open source, but you can certainly control how future versions are licensed. If you have copyright.
hinfaits 9y ago
I think is about new Arduino products not being open source. Source files for old Arduino products are still directly available.

thearn4 9y ago

I think the Arduino civil war is inevitably going to lead to ESP8266/NodeMCU boards taking over this market.

anthony_franco 9y ago
ESP32 development boards are also very impressive. And the prices are dropping every month. Can't wait to see that ecosystem evolve.
- duskwuff 9y ago
  Same goes for STM32 (ARM Cortex-M) hardware. Actually, the prices have already basically hit rock bottom. :) You can get a STM32F103C8T6 (72 MHz, 20 KB RAM / 64 KB flash) on a development board for under $5, and a programmer/debugger for about the same price.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    ESP32 advantage is having 512 KB, back to the PC1512 days, just being multi-core and having network access. :)
- pjmlp 9y ago
  I don't have any use for them, already enough side projects as it is, but the technical specifications of ESP32 are great. It is like having a PC1512 that fits on the pocket, there are already lots of programming languages that would fit on it.
- fest 9y ago
  And Espressif got their act together this time and are working on a good and open-source SDK (ESP-IDF). I just tried it out this week to make battery powered wireless temperature and humidity sensors. Sleep current for the whole system is not that great (~80uA of which 40-50 are used by ESP32 module). However, the simplicity and ease of use outweigh having to charge the battery every 3 months (3Ah li-ion cell).
  - 9y ago

ArduinoGuy 9y ago

Philip Terrone (spouse of Limor Fried, founder of Adafruit, poster of the above link and this article link) is embarking on a back-room campaign to actively assassinate the character of the Arduino.org people (the .org people are associated with Dog Hunter). This isn't his first outing in this department. The .org people (Federico Musto) are different than the Arduino.cc people (Massimo Banzi). Terrone seem to have some sort of personal vendetta going on here causing him to repeatedly lash out at them and spread rumors. I don't know exactly why, but take this post in the broader context of what has been going on. I know people who have worked with Terrone. His reputation is not so great either, he is an arrogant dude. Further evidence of this fun campaign: In the article where Federico Musto is reported to have faked his background, it says at the bottom that Philip Terrone is the source of the tip about Musto's educational background (Link: https://www.wired.com/2017/04/arduinos-new-ceo-federico-musto-may-fabricated-academic-record/ https://www.wired.com/2017/04/arduinos-new-ceo-federico-must...). "With this evidence in hand, Fried and Torrone emailed Musto, who replied that it was a mistake, and that he would correct the matter. But his various internet bios kept citing the credentials. So the pair contacted the media." So take this post with a grain of salt, it is part of a smear campaign that Terrone is going about online.

spot 9y ago
sounds like you know what's going on, maybe you can answer the questions on the email? ps. it's only a smear campaign if the accusations are false.
- falcolas 9y ago
  The accusation is "Arduino is no longer open source", but the "proof" is a mostly a few missing license files, with a few other incomplete source submissions. No change of licenses, no new bits without sources, nothing to really indicate an actual change instead of some minor oversights. I'm not familiar with the conflict, but this really looks like smearing at worst, and bad clickbait at best.
simplehuman 9y ago
Mm, your comments is unrelated to the issue being talked about in the email. I don't particularly care about who sent the email as much as the source code being available.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ajarmst 9y ago

My colleagues have developed a "spitting noise" ritual after any utterance of the word "Arduino" (<hock> ptui). As embedded developers attempting to teach others, they're not enamored of Arduino's burgeoning, and dominant, market of "people who want to do embedded development but not learn anything about embedded development" sucking up all the oxygen. I know, that's an oversimplification, but not as much of one as I could wish. I don't want to wish anyone ill, but the emergence and success of competitors that don't go so far out of the way to hide the complexity (and the need for good practice) of working with embedded systems and SBCs, wouldn't be such a bad addition to the ecosystem. (As one of two developers who actually fool around with Arduinos and Pis a fair bit (although I detest the Arduino dev environment and 'sketches'), I'm tired of all the vandalism and graffiti in my cubicle, TBH).

StavrosK 9y ago
I understand your point, but there is a good middle ground for people. As a software developer, I was amazed the first time I connected a LED to the RPi's GPIOs and made it blink with software. From that, I moved to an Arduino, with its Lego style shields, and to an ESP8266 and my own PCBs. I don't think the Arduino is just for people who don't want to learn anything about embedded. Those people exist, but it's good that they can do stuff with hardware without learning. The people who do want to learn, will learn faster with the Arduino ecosystem than without it. That said, the Dev environment sucks, PlatformIO all the way.
- ajarmst 9y ago
  That's a fair point, (and +1 for PlatformIO). And that is sort of the argument I sometimes find myself making: the Arduino Hardware is delightful. It's the ecosystem that has emerged around hobbyists that is problematic. It may just be early teething pains of something that will become remarkable. But right now, we find ourselves spending a lot of time walking back bad habits and lack of understanding of fundamentals when students show up with "projects" that involve a "schematic" that is really just a photograph of a breadboard, and the introduction of complex parts without ever consulting a data sheet, based on random code just pulled down over the Internet. And I've seen commercial products that are at about the same level of quality. The problem may be that Arduino is too forgiving.

mungoid 9y ago

I started with arduino a few years ago as a hobby and loved it as an easy way to get into the field but lately I have been realizing how many terrible habits I've obtained by learning this way. It took me weeks to retrain my brain to prefer looking at schematics instead of the breadboard views and I'm still trying to learn atmel studio and directly programming chips. It's coming along but slowly. I still think arduino is a great way for interested people to break into electronics but there is no clear 'line in the sand' when they should stop learning that way

swiley 9y ago
Don't forget, avrgcc can generate hex files for atmel chips without dragging a whole IDE around.
- davexunit 9y ago
  I'm a novice when it comes to Arduinos and stuff, but I second your suggestion for using the avrgcc toolchain instead of the Arduino IDE. I tinker with Arduinos and Arduino-likes that have the atmega32u4 chip with built-in USB controller, write the firmware in C with the LUFA library providing USB support, avrgcc to compile, and avrdude or dfu-programmer to flash.
drewm1980 9y ago
Maybe there should be a button that dumps out your project as .cpp files and a working Makefile... It's not hard to take your arduino source and figure out which #includes are being hidden from you, write your own Makefile, etc if you already know what you're doing, but if you don't know what you're doing and try to stick your Arduino code into gcc, you're trying to learn with something that started broken.
TickleSteve 9y ago
Do yourself a favour and just use 'make' and 'g++' directly, ignore the Arduino wrappers, they're just toys that hamper you after a while.
- 9y ago

Squonk42 9y ago

The answer to the question if these products are open source, the answer is: no. Here is my blog post from more than 2 years ago regarding the status of the Arduino Yùn: http://www.wifi4things.com/arduino-yun-what-is-under-the-hood/ http://www.wifi4things.com/arduino-yun-what-is-under-the-hoo... And here is my clarification request on the Arduino forum, which is still unanswered: http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=187766.0 http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=187766.0

pawadu 9y ago
I would be interesting to know if this is due to their Kramer-vs-Kramer situation or it is simply their new policy.
r3bl 9y ago
I would say that the Betteridge's law of headlines has been proven once again by this thread, but this is no article and the headline here seems more click-baity than the actual subject line of the thread.
- livingparadox 9y ago
  The answer to your parent comment's question is "no", but their question was the inverse of the post's title. So, this actually is an exception to Betteridge's law; the answer to the question is "yes, arduino is no longer open source".

Squonk42 9y ago

madarco 9y ago

Having worked in the Open Hardware community for a while, I think the most important part is: PDFs are not considered design files https://www.oshwa.org/definition/ https://www.oshwa.org/definition/ If you apply this rule, you can exclude 90% of the "Open Source/Hardware" products on the market. Also 99% are missing a BOM (Bill Of Materials). That's like shipping an open source software without the config files, forcing the users to figure out the settings by reading the sources. Unless they are buying the pre-compiled binaries from the author.

vog 9y ago
> PDFs are not considered design files https://www.oshwa.org/definition/ https://www.oshwa.org/definition/ This is a very good point! BTW, in that sense most Creative Commons work is not "open source", either. For example, a typical Creative Commons video that is just released as webm or mp4 can only be remixed, but not improved upon - which would require access to the raw video material, raw audio material and the project file of the used video cut program. Same for CC music distributes just as mp3/flac/opus, you'll need the samples, notes, music cut program file, and so on. One notable exception are tracker files (mod, s3m, it, ...), and in some sense also the MIDI files (as long as you have access to all instruments).
- jononor 9y ago
  The definition from OSHWA is tailored for hardware. OSI has the authorative for software. But yeah, music and graphics frequently also don't include the actual 'source' - just a rendered output. This is way better that having a propiatary license on the output, but does not fulfill the full potential. Some of it has to so with the tools and proceses, which frequently aren't really built to make collaborating on the source materials easy. And often the formats and tools used are proprietary. Freeware VSTs abound for instance...
  - iuguy 9y ago
    Perhaps a key difference is that OSHWA isn't authoritative. OSHWA are the FSF of hardware. As far as they're concerned, only their certification constitutes open hardware. Everyone else is wrong. Sound familiar? As someone else pointed out, a lot of people don't provide BOM files, including people who have OSHWA certified hardware.

awsometak 9y ago

What happens when a software is no longer opensource? If I am already using it and selling it to clients? Would I be allowed to use the versions which i got when it was opensource?

reacweb 9y ago

Creators do not like to follow rules. Avoidance of a bunch of nitpicks is probably the only way to motivate them. IMHO, it is not a war, just a childish fight that is mostly positive.

iuguy 9y ago

Hopefully I can provide a bit of insight on this, currently working on open hardware myself. OSHW certification is a self-certification process. Individual products are certified, not companies. What Torrone is doing is conflating Arduino the company (or foundation, or companies, or whatever it is this week, guys please stahp) and Arduino the product series, and individual Arduino products. He knows what he's doing, but in this email does it anyway. Perhaps for good cause, but it's what he's doing. There is no requirement for Arduino to certify all of it's hardware with OSHWA. In fact given the explosion of things-that-are-branded-arduino it would be unsurprising to see hardware that cannot be certified as open due to commercial agreements that override open licences. Whether this affects Arduino or not long term is a different matter but the Uno, Nano and Pro Mini are all still open. OSHWA is an attempt to define what constitutes Open Source Hardware and to define some (hopefully) sane defaults. It's the hardware equivalent of the FSF, and it's licence is the maker equivalent of the GPL. It is not the only fruit. My project[1] uses the V-USB library, which comes with an open licence[2]. The project is derived from another project, the digispark[3]. We're operating within the licence constraints, and consider our project to be open hardware (we're posting our board designs when we ship at the end of this month). To further complicate things, when Arduino uses the term Open Source it rarely clarifies what that means. It may be referring to the software stack. It might be (but probably isn't in this day and age) referring to new hardware. Either way, while it is right to pressure Arduino to clarify their position, I think it's unfair to mandate that every product they ever produce must comply with OSHWA's definition of Open Source Hardware, or that only OSHWA certified hardware can be considered "open hardware". [1] - https://hidiot.com/ https://hidiot.com/ [2] - https://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/license.html https://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/license.html [3] - https://digistump.com/ https://digistump.com/

mch82 9y ago
The OSHWA requirements for compatible open hardware licenses [1] seem to allow for permissive open source licenses, similar to Apache 2.0. Attribution may or may not be required. Derivative works are required to follow the terms of the original license, but there doesn't seem to be a default requirement "share-alike". [1]: https://www.oshwa.org/definition/ https://www.oshwa.org/definition/

lloydjatkinson 9y ago

Oh shut up, Mr Straw Man.

matthewmacleod 9y ago
You'll need to come up with a better argument than that – it is absolutely the same attitude.
- lloydjatkinson 9y ago
  It's absolutely not the same analogy in the slightest, its apples to oranges. I guess you got triggered at someone not liking arduino.
  - matthewmacleod 9y ago
    Again, please back off from the personal insults. "Arduinos are shit because the people who use them aren't real programmers" is the core of the argument there. Similarly, "PCs are shit because the people who use them aren't real programmers" is a poor argument. And we frequently see "Web applications are shit because the people who write them aren't real programmers", which is an equally poor response. There are no rules about what constitutes a 'real' programmer and a 'not real' programmer. Complaining that inexperienced people are entering a field because the barrier to entry has been lowered is stupid. Instead, we should be focussing on solving and problems that introduces: things like security, safety and scalability need to be made easier. Opening the field up is always a good thing.
    - watwut 9y ago
      > Opening the field up is always a good thing. It is not like the people who complain about these were born professional programmers. They were born babies and at some point as clueless as current inexperienced newbies. Just because someone perceived himself to be all knowing all the time does not mean that he was objectively all knowing from the day he was born. In all likelihood, it just means lack of self-awareness.

ejanus 9y ago

Adafruit is not as cool as one might expect. I was sourcing boards from them and my parcel got missing from courier company. I complained to them. Initially they tried to help but nothing came out of it. Guess what they did next ? My account with them was disabled . It almost knocked my little startup off the ground. I wrote mails but to no avail.

nerfhammer 9y ago

3/5 of the boards mentioned here have not actually been publicly released as far as I can tell (Primo, Star Otto, Star LCD).