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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."
Arduino turned 11 yesterday, and like many children of that age, the celebrations were kind of interrupted by its divorced parents' continuing battle for custody....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
It turns out that Smart Projects had trademarked the Arduino brand in Italy in December 2008, before Arduino LLC got around to filing in April 2009 in the USA.
So... what's to discuss. I don't think there's a law against being a complete asshole, so smart projects wins.
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.
After Visicalc, the first electronic spreadsheet, gave businessmen a reason to buy personal computers (specifically Apple II's), a nasty round of litigation ensued between the company that developed the software (Software Arts) and the company that productized the software (Visicorp, nee Personal Software). Both companies were dragged down as Mitch Kapor and Lotus Development came out with the hit product on the new IBM PC.
The sage is now a staple of business school curricula on what not to do, I think.
http://www.bricklin.com/history/saiend.htm
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.
Basically my perspective on this- Arduino LLC is delivering real value by developing the open-source IDE along with an API and the capability to provide 3rd party hardware support easily in their IDE. (Recent example: http://hackaday.com/2015/03/28/arduino-ide-support-for-the-esp8266/ )
Folks might not like the IDE, but the API provides a nice platform for obtaining working code for interfacing with lots of hardware. Arduino LLC's work is partly defining and expanding that API & framework.
Arduino SRL makes crappy hardware. Their market is now quite commoditized. I will be donating to Arduino LLC soon to make my point.
the real at&t mix
There are dozens of XYZ boards far more capable than Rasberry Pi .
Man the whole point is that the arduino is a common platform for tinkers evrywhere. it's the libraries and community know how that make this fun. In some ways it's like the joy of stock car races where exceeding the imposed limits can be the fun of it. It's also really simple so it's something one person can truly master in their spare time. I'm addicted. I've had doofuses tell me about other development boards that are far superior for reans A,B, and C. Sure if I was building something just to be aproduct, But they aren't going to be any fun to goof with in general.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The Arduino ecosystem relied on the strong contributions from everyone involved to reach the heights that it has. This kind of action by one of the corporations involved is just a way of telling us all that Arduino is no longer worth the trouble
No the Arduino ecosystem relied in an initial push to get the ball rolling. The Arduino IDE is stable and open source piece of software. The Arduino hardware is commodity AVR microcontrollers and two sets of headers with funny spacing and a common pinout. If both Arduino SRL and Arduino LLC vapourised tomorrow it won't make a difference as the critical mass has already been reached. Providing the IDE remains available, providing the Arduino compatible boards, often knock-offs of the original ones, remain available (which they will), then people will keep designing for Arduino shields, and the platform will go on.
So to go back to your statement: How does your time and money change as a result of what is happening by these two companies now? They aren't the sole source of the hardware, the software is open source, and the ecosystem is heavily propped up by after-market and other commercial products, and community forums. Why would the amount of "trouble" suddenly change to your value proposition?
. But you can type in the few line example C program, and flash your first blinking LED program in a matter of minutes.
You could do that with all the other ones too. TI's Launchpad, Freescale's KINETIS board, STM have their discovery boards. They all let you blink some LEDs in a matter of minutes - and the Arduino ones are the most expensive. I rather suspect that most people don't do much more than blink some LEDs anyway, since doing anything much more complicated than that with the Arduino "IDE" is an extremely painful exercise indeed.
I don't agree. I've used Code Red, Launchpad, and others. And the tools they give you pretend to be professional tools, and seem to have a steep learning curve. Especially with Code Red wanting to upsell to a better version. But most of these free IDEs are more like trial versions to me. Adruino's crippling was done to make the process of making little gizmos more accessible, most other tools are crippling so they don't cut into other markets.
That said, I never really was much of a fan of Arduino because I don't have much use for AVR. This is me finally admitting that Adruino was pretty good, and that I may have been a little stubborn to have resisted it all these years.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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.