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Open Source Businesses Build Hardware

The Arduino Split is Over, New Non-Profit Formed (arduino.cc) 73

"Today is one of the best days in Arduino history," announced Massimo Banzi, Co-Founder of Arduino LLC, calling it "a new beginning" for Ardunio. Slashdot reader ruhri reports: Massimo Banzi and Federico Musto, co-founders of the Arduino Project, announced they have settled their differences that had resulted in the creation of Arduino LLC and Arduino SRL. A new, unified Arduino Holding and Arduino Foundation will be created.
"Massimo Banzi and Federico Musto took the stage today at the New York Maker Faire to announce the good news," reports a blog post at Arudino.cc. "At the end of 2016, the newly created 'Arduino Holding' will become the single point of contact for the wholesale distribution of all current and future products... In addition, Arduino will form a not-for-profit 'Arduino Foundation' responsible for maintaining the open source Arduino desktop IDE, and continuing to foster the open source movement by providing support for a variety of scholarships, community and developer initiatives."
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The Arduino Split is Over, New Non-Profit Formed

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  • by wonkey_monkey ( 2592601 ) on Saturday October 01, 2016 @02:50PM (#52995131) Homepage

    Did one want to pronounce it "Ar-dwee-no" and the other "Ard-yoo-ee-no"?

    • When two companies fight about something it usually boils down to money being their motivation.

      • When two companies fight about something it usually boils down to money being their motivation.

        There have been many corporate feuds have have been mutually self-destructive and financially insane. These conflicts are often more about ego than money.

    • Did one want to pronounce it "Ar-dwee-no" and the other "Ard-yoo-ee-no"?

      I hear it was because Musto was jealous of Banzi's freaking awesome name

      Seriously - Massimo Banzi! Sounds like some 1980's action hero.

  • by AlphaBro ( 2809233 ) on Saturday October 01, 2016 @02:50PM (#52995133)
    Glad to here this is happening. My Arduino Diecimila lead to my first misadventure into the hardware world, and I still have it as a keepsake. Seeing the community fracture was sad, and it made many question whether open source hardware was feasible.
    • It would be interesting to know if the somewhat narrow 'window' of feasibility helped encourage them to stop fighting.

      Actual 'Arduino' products sell at a considerable premium compared to just the relevant Atmel microcontroller with bootloader(for the minimalists) or the assorted mostly adequate clones(especially if you don't need 'shield' compatibility, the standard anonymous Chinese ebay special gets you a USB connector and handles the fiddly soldering for barely more than the price of the components);
      • Actual 'Arduino' products sell at a considerable premium compared to just the relevant Atmel microcontroller with bootloader(for the minimalists) or the assorted mostly adequate clones(especially if you don't need 'shield' compatibility, the standard anonymous Chinese ebay special gets you a USB connector and handles the fiddly soldering for barely more than the price of the components); which is apparently a premium that enough people are willing to pay, either out of a desire to support the project or because the absolute cost of just buying all the official components so that things will Just Work is pretty small; but not really room enough for two confusingly similar and mutually antagonistic vendors.

        Arduino clones work, as far as I can tell, exactly as well as the "real thing". I use mostly nanos because of the form factor and capabilities and the $3 CH340G version never leaves me wondering if I've been snookered and bought one with a fake FTDI chip which the driver will choke on.

    • by LesFerg ( 452838 )

      OMG do you even grammar?

      I think you meant:

      Glad too here, this is happening.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01, 2016 @02:56PM (#52995147)

    Will continue buying the cheap Chinese clones.

  • by BrendaEM ( 871664 ) on Saturday October 01, 2016 @02:59PM (#52995161) Homepage

    Now we just need a faster 5-volt version.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Why 5V? What's wrong with 3.3V?

        Because if you're sticking to a standard central AVR part you'll find most of the line top out at a lower speed at 3.3V than 5V.

        As for what's wrong with 3.3V? What's wrong with 5V? Different voltages different usages. Just as many low voltage low power applications exist as devices that require 5V signalling which would be nice to use without level shifters. The only real question is why you think that one voltage is more capable than the other and why you think one should benefit the GP's without knowing h

      • by caseih ( 160668 )

        But the problem is interfacing with the real world. There are far more cheaply available 5v components such as sensors that you can find than 3.3v. Before the days of 3.3v, 5v was the standard, so there are many many devices and circuits out there that work at 5v. I would be happy with a 3.3v arduino so long as it had built-in logic level converters to translate to 5v for at least some of the i/o pins.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • It's about $2 to get a four-lane bidirectional level shifter. This is not a massive problem. Also, there's loads of 3.3v sensors these days. A lot of the stuff I buy is actually 3.3v internally and has a VR and a level shifter onboard, and has both a 5v and a 3v3 input.

          • by caseih ( 160668 )

            Sure but having it already on a Arduino board (with maybe jumpers to select voltage) would just make it so much easier. Much of what you can do with Arduino can be done with very little external circuitry. That's what makes it so appealing to would-be hobbyists like me.

    • As so many replies have pointed out, nobody is doing much development on CPUs that operate at 5v any more. Going to lower voltages gives us higher speeds (as a side effect of the smaller geometries that the lower voltages enable) and lower overall power consumption.

      The downside is the increased difficulty of interfacing with the outside world. Once you move down to 3.3v operation you can no longer drive some colors of LED directly; you have to use some method of getting a higher voltage to reach the thresho

  • More competition is good. One of the great things about Arduino is that for whatever reason (maybe the split) they have largely been listening to customers. So many companies will create a popular product with low margins and then suddenly go upscale trying to get larger margins. I have exactly zero interest in a $30 arduino. To me there is a handful of segments. There is the full on computer, the raspberry, the esp8266/stm32, and then there are the Arduinos going down to the attiny85.

    Arduino has been k
    • More competition is good.

      The split did not create competition. It created incompatibilities. It created two IDEs with two different versions that would each blacklist boards provided by the other without any other advantage.

      Good that the split didn't cause you any problems. There were many forum posts from angry tinkerers who had a very different experience which got out of hand enough that I personally thought it may actually kill the platform. The platform is only as good as it's community, and that got fragmented with the split.

  • by Osgeld ( 1900440 ) on Saturday October 01, 2016 @03:49PM (#52995343)

    Now with their 87 different incompatible models, all using the same junky IDE, constantly breaking support for stuff "that just worked" for years, I personally dont have time for their nonsense

  • I am not sure what I just read. This split community joined together as... two separate companies? Is this some sort of weird attempt at Newspeak?

  • by MrSteveSD ( 801820 ) on Saturday October 01, 2016 @05:40PM (#52995819)
    The story of how much of Arduino was appropriated from Hernando Barragán without credit is quite disturbing.

    https://arduinohistory.github.... [github.io]
  • Have they also decided to change the ridiculous pinout that makes the thing incompatible with vero-board?

  • "Massimo Banzi and Federico Musto took the stage today at the New York Maker Faire to announce the good news," reports a blog post at Arudino.cc. "At the end of 2016, the newly created 'Arduino Holding' will become the single point of contact for the wholesale distribution of all current and future products... In addition, Arduino will form a not-for-profit 'Arduino Foundation' responsible for maintaining the open source Arduino desktop IDE. Harga Emas Hari Ini, Cara Investasi Emas, Bisnis Online, trik trad

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