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Arduino Dispute Reaches Out To Distributors
szczys writes Two companies are claiming ownership of the Arduino Trademark. The most recent development in this sad state of affairs is a letter from Arduino SRL to long-time Distributors of Arduino products. SRL is claiming they are the real Arduino, but there are some tasty tidbits including a Q/A section with some peculiar answers. From the article: "In short, Arduino LLC has been working on developing the Arduino platform, software, and community while Smart Projects / Arduino SRL was the major official producer of the hardware for most boards. Both are claiming to 'be' Arduino, and going after each other in court. So it’s not strange that Arduino SRL would like to try to keep its hold on the distribution channels."
Sounds like a rehash of the (failed) SCO argument. We licensed UNIX, we're the only "official" seller of UNIX, therefore we ARE UNIX.
Didn't go so well for them.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I think that it was more than just marketing. Prior to Arduino, it as hard to get started in working with microcontrollers. Almost every manufacturer focused their products on already trained engineers. Arduino, from the beginning was primarily targeted toward learning for beginners.
1. Arduino was cheap
2. Arduino did not require specialty hardware for programming
3. The IDE was free, cross platform, and worked out of the box without any complicated set up.
4. They focused on lots of accessible documentation and learning material.
Now that Arduino has been successful, everybody else has jumped on the bandwagon and in many ways have developed superior ecosystems. But I credit Arduino for being the trailblazer. I have recently reallly been into MBED and Spark Core, but I doubt that those systems would exist as they are today had it not been for the creators of Arduino.
No, it's the entire environment that does that. The point of the Arduino is that any idiot can grab %insert Arduino model here% and attach %insert shield here%, go and download %insert library here% and then plug it all in and turn it on.
I have friends who have never programmed before using Arduinos for all sorts of neat things, controlling lights via PWM, monitoring environments etc. None of them would have achieved what they have if they had to dig through datasheets, understand the differences between voltages, signals, figure out how to communicate via I2S, or god forbid solder something (I'm sure most of them would have grabbed the iron like a pencil).
Arduino exists as it does because of all the little conveniences it provides.