[HN Gopher] Arduino published updated terms and conditions: no l...
___________________________________________________________________
Arduino published updated terms and conditions: no longer an open
commons
Previous thread: _The Death of Arduino?_ -
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45984143
Author : felineflock
Score : 259 points
Date : 2025-11-21 15:44 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.molecularist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.molecularist.com)
| baaron wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45984143
| timbit42 wrote:
| This article is much, much better than the LinkedIn article
| though.
| dang wrote:
| Thanks, we'll put that in the top text as well.
| abstractbeliefs wrote:
| Arduino has long been fraught with governance and licensing
| issues, but at its core has been supported first and foremost by
| a community of keen amateurs and patient professionals teaching
| in their off time.
|
| This is a reminder - never sell out your baby unless you're
| willing to see it squeezed for every penny, community be damned.
| adfm wrote:
| Arduino is as influential as it is controversial and has been
| from the beginning.
|
| https://arduinohistory.github.io
|
| https://hackaday.com/2016/03/04/wiring-was-arduino-before-ar...
| Random09 wrote:
| Looks it's time to move on. New platform and tools will emerge,
| I'm sure of it. The only way we can fight corpos is not giving
| them money and not talking about them.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| BeagleBone has been great and is going strong
| stackghost wrote:
| It's not cheap but I really enjoy tinkering with their RISCV
| boards.
| chemotaxis wrote:
| It's a completely different thing. Single-board computer
| versus a microcontroller. It might not matter for some
| applications, but it's a major tradeoff.
|
| But the only value of Arduino is the community (and the
| compile-time layer of syntactic sugar, if you like it).
| Otherwise, it's just an expensive breakout board for a cheap
| chip you can buy from Mouser or DigiKey. If you know how to
| solder, you don't really need the board in the first place.
| KalMann wrote:
| Aren't you forgetting about the software that makes it so
| easy and straightforward for newcomers to flash programs
| and experiment the microcontroller?
| chemotaxis wrote:
| First, the software is available whether you buy the
| board or not.
|
| Second, there's no real difficulty barrier, not anymore.
| There are point-and-click tools, free integrated IDEs,
| cheap programming dongles, etc. There are more
| _tutorials_ for Arduino than the underlying chip, and I
| 'm not saying that doesn't matter - but it boils down to
| the community, not the hardware.
| f1shy wrote:
| Esp32; teensy; seed
| actinium226 wrote:
| It doesn't look like they've made any drastic changes that would
| impel anyone to leave Arduino tomorrow, or in the foreseeable
| future, but if they keep going down this route I imagine the
| community will move to RPi. They've always been vastly more
| performant than Arduino and they can run linux, which is somewhat
| more approachable than the concept of programming a
| microcontroller and only being able to talk to it over serial.
| frumplestlatz wrote:
| It looks like they have modern options that run Linux now; it's
| no longer the realm of 8-bit Atmel MCUs.
|
| I'm not sure what the value proposition is overall, though. The
| IDE, perhaps? I never particularly saw the draw, but it clearly
| met the needs of some real market niche.
| ibgeek wrote:
| Maybe two different things here: SBCs that run Linux versus
| microcontrollers (MCUs).
|
| MCUs are lower power, have less overhead, and can perform
| hard real-time tasks. Most of what Arduino focuses on are
| MCUs. The equivalent is the Raspberry Pi Pico.
|
| In my experience, the key thing is the library ecosystem for
| the C++ runtime environment. There are a large number of
| Arduino and third-party high-level libraries provided through
| their package management system that make it really easy to
| use sensors and other hardware without needing to write
| intermediate level code that uses SPI or I2C. And it all
| integrates and works together. The Pico C/C++ SDK is lower
| level and doesn't have a good library / package management
| story, so you have to read vendor data sheets to figure out
| how to communicate with hardware and then write your own
| libraries.
|
| It's much more common for less experienced users to use
| MicroPython. It has a package management and library
| ecosystem. But it's also harder to write anything of any
| complexity that fits within the small RAM available without
| calling gc.collect() in every other line.
| exasperaited wrote:
| Yes. One looming concern here is that if the new Arduino is
| happy locking stuff down, the Arduino IDE story could end
| up being murkier like the PlatformIO story.
| nyeah wrote:
| The patent language would worry me a lot. It would be tough to
| have to admit, up front, "even if this widget becomes popular I
| can never build a business on it."
|
| But I'm not using Arduino, so idk.
| phoehne wrote:
| The cool thing about an Arduino is you can just buy the
| boards and use them in a commercial product. This isn't
| something you can do with other boards. Some people have said
| the license requires you to disclose your firmware, but
| that's not the way I read it and I've never heard of anyone
| being compelled to release anything (unless they modify any
| GPL covered code).
|
| Not all platforms give you the right to do this. For example,
| if you buy a dev board from STM - it's only licensed for
| research and development. Also, because you might want to
| continue to sell the same thing for years, and the board
| designs were open-sourced, you could buy the same part for
| years and years. So you can continue to sell your CNC kit
| that uses an Mega 2560 without worrying about Arduino coming
| after you or that they'd discontinue that part.
| nyeah wrote:
| Has Qualcomm changed that?
| phoehne wrote:
| Not in the short while since they've purchased Arduino,
| but I could see them restricting the licensing for
| commercial use, while keeping it freely usable for
| education. Like STM.
| exasperaited wrote:
| > "even if this widget becomes popular I can never build a
| business on it.
|
| With the exception of a handful of applications for their
| higher-end boards, I would think most of this flotilla of
| ships has already sailed, just on a cost basis?
|
| Especially lately. So much more choice.
| nyeah wrote:
| There's believing Arduino isn't useful for anything
| serious. And that might be true, I don't know. But then
| there's buying the company and making sure it isn't good
| for anything serious. It's that second part that confuses
| me.
| phoehne wrote:
| It won't be just one big move that kills the community.
| Eventually, I could see it as locked down as the STM32
| ecosystem. Nor do I see them continuing to sell the same parts
| for over a decade. They'll just want to use it to promote new
| kit. Nor do I see them keeping to board designs open over the
| long term. That will come one little step at a time.
| exasperaited wrote:
| Full-size RPi isn't Arduino's competition, surely (except for
| the newest Uno Q, which is a novel take on a Pi-type SBC).
|
| There are meaningful disadvantages to replacing an Arduino with
| even the Pi Zero.
|
| Yeah, makers will move to Raspberry Pi products for the
| ecosystem and documentation, but it will be to the RP2040/2350
| products.
|
| But also the ESP32 series, particularly Adafruit's kit.
| bangaladore wrote:
| RPi is not a good analog compared to Arduino.
|
| The main feature of classic Arduino boards has always been a
| thin abstraction layer on bare metal. RPi is not that at all.
|
| (As mentioned by the other commenter, I'm referring to their
| Linux boards, not the Pico)
| ginko wrote:
| RPi Picos are certainly bare metal.
| bangaladore wrote:
| Yes, their MCU offerings are. And I generally think that
| Micropython is a better "modern" Arduino.
|
| But most people know them for their Linux boards. And
| that's what OC was talking about.
| actinium226 wrote:
| I disagree, I think for the average hobbyist Arduino is an
| abstraction of "thing that can talk to sensors and actuate
| motors." You're right of course that RPi (excl pico) is very
| different from Arduino, but for the hobbyist it makes no
| difference if the processor on the Arduino is an Atmel or an
| ARM.
| bangaladore wrote:
| > but for the hobbyist it makes no difference if the
| processor on the Arduino is an Atmel or an ARM.
|
| I don't think anyone was arguing they cared about Atmel vs
| ARM. In fact, the point of Arduino is to make that not even
| something a user would need to know.
|
| The argument is Linux vs Bare metal Arduino are vastly
| different user experiences and complexities.
| procaryote wrote:
| I often use picos because they're much more capable when it
| comes to interfacing with hardware.
|
| You can do gpio, pwm etc from a linux pi but the hardware is
| worse at it and you'll be fighting against the system quite a
| bit. It's a lot of boring complexity to be allowed to do
| something simple; and the next update might break it.
|
| If I need a linux system AND hardware interfacing, I'll usually
| use a regular pi + a pico for the hardware stuff and connect
| them via serial or something
| qwertox wrote:
| Do tinkerers still use Arduino? I have a couple of boards here,
| but since I moved to ESP32, I never used them again. The last
| usages I gave an Arduino board was for it to serve as a
| programmer for my ESP2688. And the Arduino IDE has been replaced
| with PlatformIO in VS Code.
| Fairburn wrote:
| Same, esp32. Not liking the path that Arduino is on currently.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Yup. Esp32 is just better.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I actually use Teensy. I found that the ESP32 and its whole
| WiFi stack (?) were slowing the device down. It's not bare-
| bones enough for many of my projects.
| ghurtado wrote:
| No we don't.
|
| I have dozens of Arduinos that I will never use.
|
| With a similarly priced (sometimes cheaper) platform like the
| amazing rp2040 / rp2350 which is roughly 100 times more
| powerful, I have no idea what the niche is for them any more.
|
| The way they dropped the ball with their IDE is amazing. It
| still looks and feels like something that was rejected during
| beta testing in 1993
|
| Arduino is following roughly the same trajectory as BlackBerry,
| with the current phase being "rapidly fading into obscurity"
| cptskippy wrote:
| I just made the discovery the other day that there are two
| Arduino IDEs, the old crusty one maintained by Arduino.org
| and the new hotness maintained by Arduino.cc.
|
| I'd been using the Arduino.org version which had mostly
| driven me to use PlatformIO and ESPHome.
|
| https://www.arduino.cc/en/software/#ide
|
| Unfortunately, but perhaps fortuitously, I needed to use a
| Library only compatible with Arduino 3.0.0 which is
| incompatible with PlatformIO. That lead me to discover the
| Arduino.cc IDE which, while not on par with VSCode, is
| dramatically better than the Arduino.org IDE.
| adiabatichottub wrote:
| I'm sure somebody like me would happily take them off your
| hands. The AVR is still a solid platform for low-level
| applications. A lot of the Arduino libraries never really
| took full advantage of what you could do with that chip.
| Whatever happens with the Arduino IDE, those boards will
| still be useful tools for quite a while.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> No we don't_
|
| Why do you speak for everyone? I use my 2009 Arduino when I
| need something quick and simple.
| jonp888 wrote:
| There's plenty of semi-technical tinkerers out there, doing
| things like building flight sim cockpits, scraping by on
| copying ready made code, doing minimal changes and asking
| forums or LLMs if they get stuck.
|
| They just want something that works, and ideally to keep
| using the same thing they've always used. They know what
| Arduino is, as long as it does the job they aren't interested
| in researching alternatives. They don't want to get involved
| in adapting someone's instructions for a different pin
| layout, or risk that anything they've done up to now stops
| working.
|
| Yes, _we_ all know it 's a massively out of date platform
| easily outclassed by much cheaper and more flexible
| solutions, and if you must use the Arduino IDE it can build
| code for all sorts of boards. But for non-technical people by
| far the most important factor is to stick with something safe
| and known.
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| Not sure if this really counts as tinkering, but the other day
| I needed a custom HID device for my PC. I ordered an Arduino
| Micro (I think?), one that supports HID out of the box, and
| with under 300 lines of code my problem was solved.
|
| The Arduino HAL and the overall comfort of the Arduino IDE are
| genuinely valuable. I didn't have to learn new flashing tools
| or a new debugging toolchain just to light a few LEDs, read
| some buttons, and emulate keypresses on a PC. The learning
| curve was basically zero.
|
| I've worked with embedded systems before, and this level of
| simplicity is incredibly useful for people who just want to
| ship simple solutions to simple problems without fighting
| through vendor-specific, arcane tooling.
|
| I've got some RP2350s since then with Micropython, now those
| might be even better for getting stuff done (without network or
| extreme low power needs)
| jacquesm wrote:
| The Arduino IDE works for many other devices as well if you
| really want it.
| shevy-java wrote:
| I tried to get into it; built some simple LED thingies. Then
| kind of fatigued.
|
| I semi-attribute this to my lack of willpower but perhaps
| arduino also isn't as tinker-epic as I thought it may be.
| jgerrish wrote:
| I don't know if I'll use Arduino in a professional project, but
| the existence of simavr and in-tree QEMU support means I can at
| least unit-test my code without dedicated test runners hooked
| up to hardware or licensing for Wokwi.
|
| Indie devs who need testable builds might be a smaller market
| than tinkerers, but they're there.
|
| It's a pain anticipating money flow into the future in more
| ways than one.
| oytis wrote:
| What's the point of paying a hefty sum of money for the right to
| destroy a product and a team neither or whom are in competition
| with you? Not the first time I see it happening
| nyeah wrote:
| For some reason most companies never seem to realize that they
| will destroy their acquisitions. It's always kind of an
| afterthought. "Oh, right, we have to terrify the new customers
| and lay off the people who make the products work. Sam, take
| care of that, will you?"
|
| Acquisitions tend to be done in a haze of dream-state thinking.
| Maybe that's part of it.
| toyg wrote:
| You're buying an established brand to augment yours, regardless
| of what that brand does. It's a sort of SEO.
|
| In this case, though, I disagree that there was no competition.
| Ecosystems like Arduino are real threats to large incumbents in
| adjacent sectors. If all the tooling and products necessary to
| embedded development end up being easily accessible, expensive
| options like Qualcomm's become effectively commoditized.
| Qualcomm basically acted like Bill Gates buying Compu-Global-
| Hyper-Mega-Net https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Compu-Global-
| Hyper-Mega-Net
| zajio1am wrote:
| From Arduino ecosystem i always have a feeling that they try to
| do an unnecessary ecosystem lock-in. Most Arduinos are just Atmel
| AVR MCU with fancy bootloader. You do not need Arduino-this or
| Arduino-that for programming them, avr-gcc and avr-libc is
| enough.
| oytis wrote:
| There is no lock in, you can use avr-gcc with Arduino boards.
| Arduino is a portable SDK with HAL, you can add support for
| your own devices to it pretty easily
| zajio1am wrote:
| Yes, i mean more like educational lock-in, trying to push
| their own tools and SDKs so people get used to them.
| oytis wrote:
| The point is ease of use. It was designed for artists and
| other non-programmers originally. I've seen people who
| would never figure out how to use a crosscompiler do pretty
| cool things with Arduino.
| ghurtado wrote:
| The lock-in is that it's a big pain in the arse to use
| anything but their IDE.
|
| Most vendor lock-in isn't "it's impossible to do the thing"
| but "it's hard enough to do the thing any other way, so this
| is effectively the only practical way to do it"
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| It's also possible to import the Arduino libs/headers and
| build against them with a little bit of Make.
|
| I put together a simple setup to skip the arduino ide on an
| AVR design, but still be able to use their serial.println
| and other utilities. You can use it side by side with
| manual register masks for enabling IO.
| oytis wrote:
| But the vendor in this case is Atmel and the hard way has
| existed before Arduino was created. The contribution of
| Arduino was that they made the simplified path - it doesn't
| make sense to accuse them of lock in for that.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > The lock-in is that it's a big pain in the arse to use
| anything but their IDE.
|
| How so? It uses bog standard avr-gcc and avrdude. There is
| nothing stopping you from using those yourself.
|
| What's hard about it?
| abstractbeliefs wrote:
| I think it's important to understand the early development.
|
| It's true that you can (and always could) use avr-gcc and libc,
| but the core sale was what makes it not this.
|
| The "locked in"/captured API and IDE were directly extensions
| of a language and IDE called Processing.
|
| Processing overlaid an art-focussed layer on top of Java,
| providing a simpler API, and an IDE with just two buttons.
|
| Arduino was based on this - the same IDE format, similar API
| conventions (just on top of C++), precisely to allow these same
| artists to move into physical installations and art.
|
| Arduino was not designed initially to be so general, it was
| tool written by and for this specific group of people, so has
| opinions and handrails that limit the space to provide the same
| affordances as Processing specifically.
| phoehne wrote:
| From an embedded developer's perspective, Arduino is awful.
| That hero-loop programming is not what anyone should ever do.
| And experienced developers can get better results from
| something like FreeRTOS (or if you're a masochist Zephyr). And
| ESP32s are cheaper, as are RP2040s. ...
|
| But take a room full of kids and get them to write a program
| that blinks an LED, or drive a simple 'robot' forward, and it's
| awesome. Easy to use. I've never burned out a board (even
| driving considerable current through them). Things are
| tolerably well marked. Lots of teaching tools. Lots of
| different suppliers of easy to connect motors, servos, lights,
| sensors, etc.
|
| For the same reason, if you are not an embedded engineer, but
| need a simple micro-controller to turn something on an off like
| a heater in a chicken coop, it's fantastic. And if you want,
| buy the $5 knock-off Uno. It should be the same, except that it
| doesn't support the (now defunct) foundation.
| adiabatichottub wrote:
| > From an embedded developer's perspective, Arduino is awful.
|
| Specific AVR Arduino annoyances I remember:
|
| * Strings loaded to RAM instead of program memory, so you use
| up all your RAM if you have a lot of text. Easily fixed with
| a macro
|
| * serial.println blocks, so your whole program has to stop
| and wait for the string to be transmitted. Easily fixed with
| a buffer and ISR
|
| * Floating-point used everywhere, because fuck you
|
| * No printf(). It's in avr-libc, and it's easy plumbed in,
| but the first C/C++ function that everybody ever learned to
| use was somehow too complicated or something.
|
| * A hacked-together preprocessor that concatenated
| everything, which meant you could only have your includes in
| one place, thus breaking perfectly good, portable code.
|
| I think they ultimately did a disservice to novice
| programmers by giving them something that was almost a
| standard C++ environment, but just not quite.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > Strings loaded to RAM
|
| Modern AVRs have program memory mapped into the RAM address
| space. The GCC linker scripts for the parts that support
| this put strings into .rodata within that memory region,
| obviating the need for special macros to retrieve them.
| However, you won't find this on most of the usual suspects
| in the Arduino AVR ecosystem.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| > The most dangerous change is Arduino now explicitly states that
| using their platform grants you no patent licenses whatsoever.
| You can't even argue one is implied.
|
| > This means Qualcomm could potentially assert patents against
| your projects if you built them using Arduino tools, Arduino
| examples, or Arduino-compatible hardware.
|
| Yep, the complete opposite of "open".
| adhoc_slime wrote:
| arduino's response to the discourse is here:
|
| https://blog.arduino.cc/2025/11/21/the-arduino-terms-of-serv...
| M95D wrote:
| I don't trust that reply.
|
| I'm not saying the person(s) who wrote that is(are) lying. It's
| just that it doesn't seem to come from someone with authority
| to make decisions like that or even from someone well informed
| about the global strategy of the corporation.
|
| To me "Arduino Team" is just a bunch of hopeful or even naive
| employees.
| belval wrote:
| Your comment is/was getting downvoted perhaps because of the
| last line but this is very true:
|
| > It's just that it doesn't seem to come from someone with
| authority to make decisions like that or even from someone
| well informed about the global strategy of the corporation.
|
| Arduino is owned by Qualcomm, Qualcomm is known for being
| litigious. Whoever wrote that note, unless it was the CEO of
| Qualcomm, doesn't actually call the shots and if tomorrow the
| directive comes from above to sue makers they will have to
| comply.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| I mean even if it came from the CEO he could change his
| mind tomorrow.
|
| It's maybe better to look at incentives, something that
| blog posts can help illustrate. Does Qualcomm want to mine
| the maker community for IP or get them to adopt its
| technology?
| sansseriff wrote:
| I remember 15 years ago when I was in highschool I really wanted
| to learn how to program 8 bit microcontrollers without Arduino.
| And everybody looked at me like I was crazy. There was barely any
| learning material out there about how to do this.
|
| Now, I imagine the bias pushing everyone to learn on arduino is
| even more intense? Who out there is programming these chips in
| pure C using open source compilers and bootloaders?
|
| Edit: Of course there's other platforms like Esp32; teensy; seed.
| But I've only programmed Esp32s using the arduino dev
| environment. Are there other good ways of doing it?
| RobRivera wrote:
| Whats the motorola ecosystem like these days? Its been a good
| 16 years for me
| phoehne wrote:
| 15 years ago I think Arduino was the best choice for
| educational purposes. I still think it's a great choice now.
| The fact the IDE and board are basically the same as they were
| 15 years ago, means you can figure out how to set everything up
| once and focus on teaching, rather than PC trouble-shooting.
| Which, for basic concepts, or younger kids, is great. And if
| they find a 5 or 10 year old video on how to do something, it's
| still relevant.
|
| If I were putting teaching materials today - I would pick
| something like Micro python. The down side is it isn't as
| "canned" a solution, meaning there might be something new to
| figure out every so often. Which means you spend more time
| helping people trouble shoot why something isn't working,
| instead of teaching something useful. On the up side, Python is
| pretty much the introductory language of choice, today. With
| lots of available materials.
|
| That's not to say Arduino was perfect. Far from it. Just easier
| to do, and more consistent over time, than other options.
| colonial wrote:
| > Are there other good ways of doing it?
|
| I'm working on an ESP32 project right now, and Espressif
| provides shrink-wrapped toolchains for C/++ and Rust. The
| latter even comes with a little tool called 'espup' that
| cleanly installs their fork of Rust and LLVM (for Xtensa
| support) - I was able to compile and run a blinky in less than
| half an hour.
|
| See https://docs.espressif.com/projects/rust/book/ - it also
| wasn't too hard for me to whip up a Nix Flake with the same
| toolchain, if that's your jam.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > But I've only programmed Esp32s using the arduino dev
| environment.
|
| Well you can use PlatformIO/VSCode and the ESP-IDF.
|
| If you're ok with the Arduino 2 framework, then you can use
| PlatformIO as well. Unfortunately Arduino 3 support isn't there
| yet so a lot of libraries like HomeSpan won't work on
| PlatformIO at the moment.
|
| https://github.com/platformio/platform-espressif32/issues/12...
| pedro_caetano wrote:
| > Who out there is programming these chips in pure C using open
| source compilers and bootloaders?
|
| The gcc-arm-none-eabi toolchain is pretty much what you are
| asking for at least for ARM targets. You can literally use a
| text editor and gcc-arm-none-eabi, that's it.
|
| And if you want something really bare bones avr-gcc still
| targets the whole atmel family including those ATtiny chips
| which are also a lot of fun.
|
| I don't know the state of it nowadays but 'Mbed' is probably
| worth looking into. The project had _a_lot_ of Middleware
| libraries to abstract hardware, a few levels below, makes
| embedded development a little less datasheet dependent,
| specially if you are just hacking something as a hobbyist.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| You can also ditch the space consumed by a bootloader and
| save the UART for something productive in your designs. This
| is makes it feasible to use the smaller capacity chips and
| have more headroom on the larger ones. AVR programmers are
| cheap and the latest serial port based protocol requires the
| barest of hardware to support.
| adiabatichottub wrote:
| I learned how to program the AVR in assembly 25 years ago by
| reading the datasheet and various articles in Nuts and Volts.
| For its time the AVR had a very accessible development kit, the
| STK500, which cost about $100. A few years later avr-libc came
| along and if you were running linux and knew how to write C it
| was pretty easy to get started.
| watermelon0 wrote:
| > There was barely any learning material out there about how to
| do this.
|
| I started playing around with ATmega/ATtiny around 2008, and
| from what I remember, there were plenty of tutorials and
| examples out there.
|
| I remember that AVR and PIC were two popular options among
| hobbyists at that time, but I started with AVR since it was
| easier to get the programmer, and it had a lot better open
| source tooling.
| userbinator wrote:
| Small MCUs like the low-end PICs are best programmed in Asm.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > Who out there is programming these chips in pure C using open
| source compilers and bootloaders?
|
| Everyone using Arduino, for a start.
| jajuuka wrote:
| Qualcomm wasted no time and tanking this purchase. Not sure how
| the MBA's thought this would be a good idea to change everything
| about a project. Wouldn't be surprised to see the prices of the
| boards go up $200 tomorrow at this rate.
| ndiddy wrote:
| This article is somewhat misleading. The changed ToS only covers
| Arduino's hosted cloud services, not the IDE or microcontroller
| library. This is spelled out in black and white in the first
| paragraph of the ToS:
|
| > 1.1 The Site is part of the platform developed and managed by
| Arduino, which allows users to take part in the discussions on
| the Arduino forum, the Arduino blog, the Arduino User Group, the
| Arduino Discord channel, and the Arduino Project Hub, and to
| access the Arduino main website, subsites, Arduino Cloud, Arduino
| Courses, Arduino Certifications, Arduino Docs, the Arduino EDU
| kit sites to release works within the Contributor License
| Agreement program, and to further develop the Arduino open source
| ecosystem (collectively, the "Platform"). The use of the Site,
| the Platform, and the Services is governed by these Terms
| including the other documents and policies made available on the
| Platform by Arduino.Certifications, Arduino Docs, the Arduino EDU
| kit sites to release works within the Contributor License
| Agreement program, and to further develop the Arduino open source
| ecosystem (collectively, the "Platform"). The use of the Site,
| the Platform, and the Services is governed by these Terms
| including the other documents and policies made available on the
| Platform by Arduino.
| mrlambchop wrote:
| (caveat - not a lawyer... but I'll share my opinion)
|
| That list in 1.1 isn't an exhaustive definition which is IMO,
| one of the causes of the fire. Again, "IMO", the list is an
| illustrative set of examples as there is no limiting language
| like "solely" or "only" and the clause even mixes services and
| purposes, which again signals it's descriptive rather than
| definitive.
|
| Saying that, whilst the list inside the definition of "the
| Platform" is illustrative, the category it defines seems scoped
| to Arduino-hosted online properties which could be argued is
| the intent. But its an argument alas...
|
| Either way, ambiguous policy is being communicated by these T+C
| updates and that is a real problem.
| st3fan wrote:
| Yeah no. Wishful thinking. History has shown that huge
| corporations taking over open source project generally results
| in a big change how those projects are governed and how the
| legalese like t&c turns out.
|
| Not a lawyer obviously - but lets see how this plays out.
| mlindner wrote:
| This was already covered in the previous thread you mentioned.
| Just merge the threads.
| macintux wrote:
| Dang added the previous thread to the description. I don't know
| why he didn't merge them.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| Is Arduino actually used for anything serious? While I certainly
| appreciate how their whole ecosystem has made working with
| microcontrollers more accessible... even the most casual
| hobbyists I know very quickly move on to something like an ESP32.
| teo_zero wrote:
| Please, before commenting on this article, be sure to read
| Qualcomm's reply posted by adhoc_slime:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46007805
| lysace wrote:
| https://github.com/arduino/arduino-ide
|
| License: GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
|
| Who does the fork? Paging e.g. Adafruit and Sparkfun.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| Qualcomm would force arduino to focus at enterprise offering
|
| its happy ending for both investor
| franky47 wrote:
| Sad, I wrote my first ever programs on Arduino, learned C++
| through it, and did my first OSS contribution by creating the
| Arduino MIDI Library, ~16 years ago.
|
| I wouldn't be where I am if it wasn't for Arduino. Thank you to
| the OSH community for making these boards open to all back then.
| nofunsir wrote:
| I see Gianluca Martino let arduino.com lapse/is squatting it.
| Maybe the experiment is done? Is Adafruit no longer
| #TeamArduinoCC ?
| ptorrone wrote:
| good find, i can say that we are (adafruit) always
| #teamopensourcearduino which is what cc _was_
| LandoCalrissian wrote:
| Qualcomm blew this up in record time, impressive stuff.
| shevy-java wrote:
| That's sad. Perhaps a fork may be created, but right now I think
| it is true that arduino is dead. Guess we need an alternative
| now.
| manchoz wrote:
| Arduino official response -
| https://blog.arduino.cc/2025/11/21/the-arduino-terms-of-serv...
| talideon wrote:
| Well, I'd say the Qualcommisation of Arduino is happening as
| expected and apace.
| VerifiedReports wrote:
| I haven't even considered Arduino for anything in years. It's
| just way overpriced and oversized. For the same price as an Uno
| you can get a Raspberry Pi 4, or seven Picos.
|
| Nonetheless, this looks like another step toward robbing everyone
| of something useful and reducing our options... not to mention
| encouraging others to do the same thing. Depressing.
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