[HN Gopher] Arduino Pro hardware is not open-source hardware
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Arduino Pro hardware is not open-source hardware
Author : zdw
Score : 78 points
Date : 2021-07-07 21:44 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.adafruit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.adafruit.com)
| RantyDave wrote:
| "we want to prevent counterfeiters"
|
| Hear that? Counterfeiters. As in: criminals. Very, _very_ not
| open source.
| netr0ute wrote:
| Sad, but at least The Big Ada could fight back by not selling the
| Pros until they become FOSH.
| grammarprofess wrote:
| How's it sad? How does it affect you? They made it clear they
| want to protect customers from low quality clones
| stavros wrote:
| In my experience, "low quality clones" means "clones that
| work perfectly well but don't bring in any of the money we
| spent on R&D", which is fair.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Clarification, about mid-page.
|
| _"... At least for an initial period, we want to prevent
| counterfeiters from blindly downloading a file and manufacturing
| it without any R &D effort or contribution to the community,
| because the result of that will be tens or hundreds of low-
| quality clones which do not have nearly the quality of ours, and
| no benefit for the community. ..."
|
| "... This is why for them we chose the same approach as Raspberry
| Pi: we publish schematics so that anyone can learn from them, and
| we keep the entire software stack completely open source. But at
| least for now, Altium files are available only upon request so
| that we can check whether someone can actually manufacture them
| with the required quality. ..."
|
| "Alessandro Ranellucci Head of Maker Business, Open Source &
| Community ARDUINO.CC"_
|
| Aside the unfortunate comparison with the Raspberry PI approach
| (the RPi uses binary blobs, therefore is not open), it seems the
| case is closed: at least initially, hackers will have all
| necessary information minus what is often being used only by
| clone builders, namely CAD files. Schematics are open and
| software is open; building clones is still possible for users but
| less convenient for companies.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Meanwhile, ST publishes full schematics and CAD files for all
| of their development boards, e.g.
|
| https://www.st.com/en/evaluation-tools/stm32h747i-disco.html...
|
| They aren't freely licensed, to be fair, but at least they're
| published! And, in practice, ST won't mind if you refer to
| their reference boards while designing your own hardware;
| that's what they're for, after all.
| turpialito wrote:
| In other words: "the Chinese are driving us out of business with
| their 3 nano's for 5 bucks".
| willis936 wrote:
| Is there something to read that gives some context to "Arduino
| Pro"? I read Arduino's page on it, but something about it still
| isn't clicking for me. What is it? Why is it?
|
| https://www.arduino.cc/pro/why-pro
| wanderingjew wrote:
| If you're shocked by this, you would be appalled at the state of
| Open Source Hardware.
|
| I've gone over the OSHWA Certified Project list [1], go into the
| repos, and actually take a look at what these projects offer. The
| _majority_ of projects only include a schematic PDF, which by
| OP's own assertion is not Open Source. If you find some
| mechanical bits of projects, you'll find some Solidworks files,
| too -- good luck opening that without calling a Dassault sales
| rep. And of course there are the projects where the links to
| project files are just dead. Only about 50% of OSHWA-certified
| are editable in any software.
|
| Unsurprisingly, one of the best contributors to OSHWA-certified
| projects is Adafruit, with Sparkfun close behind. Everything is
| just there (needs a bit more organization, imho), sitting in a
| Github. Almost everything is in Eagle, though, which is non-free
| and sure to annoy some Open Source advocates.
|
| There are a few theories on why this is, most notably that 'Open
| Source' is a replacement for the cost sink of producing real
| documentation. The fact that companies (Adafruit and Sparkfun)
| are the largest contributors of OSHWA certified hardware supports
| this.
|
| [1] https://certification.oshwa.org/list.html
| grammarprofess wrote:
| I don't quite understand why some are riled up for this? It's a
| single product line(for now a single product). It's
| understandable an industrial control board warrants the extra QA,
| manufacturing and layout quality. In their shoes I would also ask
| the Chinese: "Hey can you design your own layout, with it's own
| branding and name?"
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I wasn't particularly surprised by this. I've got a copy of an
| unreleased "Arduino" product that was never going to be open
| source that I beta tested for them.
|
| I suspect a large portion of the community is not averse to
| people supporting themselves on these sorts of projects and
| frankly, open source efforts do not seem to have a track record
| of supporting the people who support them.
| duskwuff wrote:
| The software isn't fully open-source either. Some components of
| the USB stack are licensed under ST's "Ultimate Liberty License"
| [1], which is clearly not open source:
|
| > 5. No use, reproduction or redistribution of this software
| partially or totally may be done in any manner that would subject
| this software to any Open Source Terms...
|
| In fact, I suspect that Arduino may be in violation of both this
| license and the GPL by linking the ULL licensed code with GPL-
| licensed Arduino code.
|
| [1]: http://www.st.com/SLA0044
| bscphil wrote:
| > ST's "Ultimate Liberty License"
|
| Wow. That's a shocking level of assholery. It's effectively a
| BSD license with an added restriction which says it can't be
| licensed (e.g. as part of a combined work) under any open
| source license.
|
| So effective it's an anti-open-source poison pill license under
| the guise of an "ultimate liberty" (??) license. It takes some
| insanity to freely license your software to your competitors to
| use in their closed-source products while explicitly adding a
| term to your license to prevent hobbyists from using it as open
| source software.
|
| > In fact, I suspect that Arduino may be in violation of both
| this license and the GPL by linking the ULL licensed code with
| GPL-licensed Arduino code.
|
| Yes, assuming that the FSF is correct that the GPL prohibits
| linking. IIRC GPL3 is clearer about this than GPL2.
|
| > You may convey a work based on the Program, or the
| modifications to produce it from the Program ... provided that
| you also meet all of these conditions ... You must license the
| entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes
| into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply,
| along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the
| whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they
| are packaged.
|
| https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html
|
| Edit: I removed one claim about the license being self-
| contradictory. On closer inspection, it is clearly not an open
| source license, because it requires that the software only be
| used "solely and exclusively on or in combination with a
| microcontroller or microprocessor device manufactured by or for
| STMicroelectronics."
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The end user does the linking and very likely never distributes
| a compiled binary to other parties so GPL doesn't take effect.
| wmf wrote:
| Did anyone notice or care that RPis aren't open source?
| caslon wrote:
| The FSF has been on that case for a while now.
|
| https://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/single-board-computer-gui...
|
| > In many geeky circles, single-board computers are popular
| machines. SBCs come in small form factors and generally run
| GNU/Linux, but unfortunately, many boards like the popular
| Raspberry Pi are dependent on proprietary software to use. The
| Free Software Foundation maintains a list of system-on-chip
| families, sorted by their freedom status.
| wmf wrote:
| That's talking about software but I'm wondering about open
| source hardware. Is it even a good idea? It allows clones to
| suck out the money needed to design the next generation, and
| for what benefit?
| duskwuff wrote:
| Open-sourcing the Raspberry Pi hardware would simply be
| _irrelevant_. You can 't purchase BCM283x series SoCs, nor
| the other Broadcom parts on the board, without a purchasing
| agreement with Broadcom.
| ohazi wrote:
| Not only does the RPi foundation not release any board files
| for the RPi (fine, whatever), their "abbreviated schematic" is
| insultingly sparse [0].
|
| The processor, memory, microSD card socket, Wi-Fi chip, USB hub
| chip, and Ethernet controller chip are all missing. If all you
| can get out of it is the pinout of the HAT and video
| connectors, then why did they even bother?
|
| [0]
| https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...
| bloggie wrote:
| Yes...? There is plenty about them that is not open source:
| hardware, drivers, etc. Even the Broadcom docs are typically
| only available under license.
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