Arduino SRL To Distributors: “We’re The REAL Arduino”


The Business History of Arduino



The Gist of it


March 27 Letter






What this Means



Ivrea (TO) , March 27, 2015

Dear Partners,

At this time we feel it necessary to update our partners on the state of Arduino® products and the distribution business which you are a key part of.

Arduino Srl (aka Smart Projects Srl), as you know has been from the beginning of the Arduino® project, the place where the ideas were turned into reality and into a business. The first Arduino® models were made and initially distributed to schools of interactive design all over the world.

Arduino® products were then offered to the first DIY enthusiasts, contributing concretely, as one of the first open source electronic boards, to found and promote the Makers Movement: your strong efforts and contribution have made this great new movement a success and has grown in many new exciting areas like IoT and m2m. A realization that will change the world of electronics and communications in the physical world.

The family of Arduino® boards has helped professional and non-professional developers to prototype electrical projects and learn in a way that is accessible and possible for everyone.

Currently, Arduino Srl continues to be the only designer and manufacturer of original Arduino® products.

Open Source is the environment we want for millions of designers, engineers, makers and Arduino® lovers around the world. We hope to continue to help children and newbies learn about electrical engineering and computer programming, in order to develop and grow their ideas for today and tomorrow.

This fantastic story and these ideals will continue on the new website, which has been developed to ensure we stay true to the vision of the beginning of Arduino® and Arduino Srl and our distribution of these cool products.

Beginning in 2015 new changes have been put into place to ensure that our companies can continue to grow with the popularity of the Arduino® product line. The production of these high quality products continue to be done in Europe and specifically Italy which has been very successful.

Our distribution and logistics are going through a change for a couple of reasons, to help with faster deliveries and lower transport costs, we have a new company structure cc logistics that have offices and warehouses in three continents, EMEA Cham Switzerland, North American Boston Massachusetts and APAC Honk Kong and Taipei.

Additionally lots of work are being completed to get inventories in line with demand. New personnel are being added to in many areas for response to your buying needs but also in the sales and support areas to ensure we are creating demand for Arduino products and for our distribution channel. These new sales people from time to time will be in contact to forge closer working relationships.

To help inform our partners of some questions recently raised in the press and other areas:

Q: Are there two “Arduino® ” branded products manufacturers?

A: Not really, the only company that ever designed and manufactured the “Arduino® ” branded product is Arduino Srl (formerly Smart Projects Srl). Others, for a number of reasons, have created in USA and Switzerland “Arduino” named companies. Some have been involved in completing contracts for web site development and PR (namely Arduino SA – Switzerland take cares of the web site has been one of those). Clearly this has been the place to go for open source info in the past, but we will make your new comprehensive location for this info and other valuable resources and services.

Q: I have heard in the press that there is a disagreement going on amongst initial founders of the open source project which inspired the Arduino® business.

A: Yes, there is a disagreement between the initial founders of the open source project (which have never been shareholders of Arduino Srl) and the actual management of Arduino Srl. We are confident that these issues will come to a conclusion shortly. Frankly some of these issues are complex because related to the validity of the registration of the trademark “Arduino® ” in some areas of the world and cannot be summarized in few words. In this respect just bear in mind that Arduino Srl (aka Smart Projects Srl) has been the sole manufacturer of the original “Arduino® ” branded products, selling and distributing them world wide for 10 years.

Q: Will cc logistics replace Magyc as distribution points ?

A: That is the big plan but exceptions may happen due to the nature of doing a worldwide distribution. cc logistics will help our makers to produce and distribute their projects in a world wide arena.

Q: Will Arduino make new products and new software?

A: Yes, new software and new products are the life blood of Arduino® . Recently new products, Arduino® Zero Pro, Arduino® , 9 Axes shield partnership with Bosch and many more are coming.

Q: Will Arduino forge technology partnership?

A: Arduino is in the forefront of new exciting fields like IoT and m2m which is an exciting direction of the type of prototyping done with present day Arduino® products. We are in constant contact with major companies exploring these exciting fields. The Arduino YUN with its wifi capabilities and open source processing has ignited lots of new opportunities.

Q: Arduino EMEA, APAC and NA Distributors Sales Meeting

A: We are planning and will notify you of the details of the first global annual meeting

Q: Is there a New Management structure in Arduino ?

A: As it happens in every company that grows as fast as the Arduino environment, additional expertises and capabilities are needed to help steer the company in the correct direction. Federico Musto is the new CEO of Arduino group and he has a strong background in the open source business.

You are Arduino and we are honored and privileged to work with you – Arduino isn’t the company, nor the board, nor the software nor the founders – the Arduino is YOU – You made Arduino® what it is today and you’ll continue to make it what it will be in the future.

Thank you in advance for your help and support

Arduino team

Arduino Srl
legal adress: Via Romano, 12 – 10010 Scarmagno (TO) Italy
shipping address: Via Kennedy, 36 – 10019 Strambino (TO) Italy

199 thoughts on “Arduino SRL To Distributors: “We’re The REAL Arduino”

  1. Sorry guys (not HaD), but just because you manufactured the first boards doesn’t give you the right to claim you’re “the one true Arduino”. Anyone that buys into that is gullible enough to “buy ocean-front property in Arizona” :)

      1. Actually, that’s a pretty concise version of how I feel. No matter whose side you want to come down on with this one they’re both going to lose. If this goes far enough eventually the community will sour to it and move along. I figure it’s good will that keeps people buying brand name Arduino and once that good will is gone so are their customers.

        1. There’s always Beagleboard and RPi (and plenty of others like Teensy) to support. Vendors that are actually innovating and advancing the hardware capability. Streaming HDTV on an Arduino? Hah! It’s 2015, 32 KB flash is all anybody would ever need!

        2. ‘They’ always win…. “If it were not for Lawyers, you wouldn’t need them.” I can’t believe, I checked out and you can get counterfeit Arduino Unos for $3 each, _free shipping_????

        3. @Waterjet yes you would care because price isn’t everything. The feature set of the RPi vs an Arduino are quite different. There are things the Arduino is capable of that the RPi is not owing to the very direct way hardware is addressed in projects (reads: no OS in the way).

          The reality is it doesn’t matter if both companies disappear in a cloud of smoke tomorrow. Arduino is nothing more than a bit of software and a bootloader. As long as there are AVRs there will be a way to use Arduino.

          1. I sincerely doubt that there is any device you can drive or sensor you can read from an Arduino, that you couldn’t drive or read from the RPi given the right software. People said for a long time that you couldn’t drive NeoPixels from the RPi because the OS was not realtime, and NeoPixels use a self-clocking signal that requires timing accurate to 400 +-150 nanoseconds. I wrote a driver that did that exact thing, that runs on top of Linux – not bare metal. It uses the DMA controller, a feature Arduino lacks, to run at full speed, regardless of whether the CPU is idle or going at full bore. The code is used in Hyperion and probably some other projects.

        4. Reading this and looking through Musto’s presentation* last year (bad automatic transcription warning), it looks like he’s trying to stir the Arduino platform into Java driven IoT builds and “mainstream” projects, and lock it down into their distribution system. Does he not get that Arduino Nanos are coming in at US$2.50 directly from China? That dozens of other sites have tutorials and code repositories (thank you Adafruit and others).

          The horse has left the barn.

          Pity that the real victims here will be the original intended customer/participants (who are sometimes denigrated in HAD for not being among the cool programmers/electrical engineers) – rookies, students, the timid, and the curious. Some percentage of these “hello world”s and blinking pin-13s are the future of the field as a whole.

          1. Except that Microsoft doesn’t get out the trademark club every time someone develops software in which you can open multiple windows (Linux, anybody?), only if someone sells counterfeit copies of Windows or other infringing uses of their trademark.

    1. In 20 years when california has fallen into the sea, and the oceans have risen due to global warming from solar power plants then I’ll be the one laughing from my wonderful palm tree growing beach front property in Arizona. At least until the Yellowstone supervolcano goes nova and takes out everything but china.

          1. Except less glass or culture. It would be fantastic if they embraced it and made canals their new road system, if it happens. But like the commie fearing fathers before them, the main american plan is building giant walls… that won’t protect against surging waves…

      1. not really, ebay and aliexpress are full of them. Arduino pro minis go for $3. There’s no chance any royalties are going to SRL for that.

        I am curious though, apart from the guy below here, does ANYONE see LLC as the bad guys? From all the information I’ve read, it just seems like SRL are a bunch of pricks trying to be greedy bastards. Even the email above comes across this way.

        In any case, there can only be one winner. My bet is on the lawyers. They always win.

        1. eBay and aliexpress might have something that is marketed as “Arduino”, but are they genuine or “counterfeit” (note the quotes, since the board files are freely available for a good portion of the products), meaning not manufactured by Smart Projects SRL. Sure, some of them might be, since it’s quite likely that there are folks out there that do buy the genuine article just to resell on eBay, but not all of them will be.

    1. agreed. though a list of what exactly did both companies contributed to open hardware/software would make my decision better. right now it is based on “SLR looks like the assholes” which is not very informative.

      anyway, i don’t buy many arduinos, but until i see a list like the above, i will make sure to only buy unlicensed clones from china just to be on the safe side.

      PS: i hit report on the above comment instead of reply… there’s no way to undo it.

      1. Buying the clones is probably the best option at this time, along with assisting Arduino LLC with testing, debugging and such of the software they started; I even think we should donate money to them to show our support. Although, it’s pretty evident that the community has been pretty much involved with Arduino LLC for most of the time I’ve been aware of the stuff, and Smart Projects has always handled the manufacturing based on the plans drawn up by Arduino LLC.

      1. At least for Apple, Foxconn does good quality work and not as easy to replace.

        On the other hand when you are a contract manufacturer that can do low tech Arduino, you are easily replaceable with any other contract manufacturer. Show me something beyond 1990’s level of board manufacturing, then may be they are worth something. e.g. the Beagle Board that uses 0.4mm pitch BGA parts. Now that’s beyond the average proto PCB places.

        1. true. i only bought original ones because they were sure to be paying royalties back to the people open sourcing the project!

          i never bought official boards because they were not hard to build myself or they were in any way better than the $0.75 chinese ones. Their differential to me was exclusively that they were sending the royalties to the right place.

      2. Truth is any one can manufacture/design(PCB) an Arduino board. There’s nothing (highly) challenging about it. That’s Arduino SLR.

        Truth is almost no one can develop the IDE, libraries and examples from scratch. This is Arduino LLC, in conjunction with the community contibutors (like Paul).

        The biggest effort in Arduino was never the hardware, but the software and the ecosystem. I hope the judges understand that.

        1. While i don’t agree that “Almost no one can build the IDE libraries and examples), I whole-heartedly agree with the sentiment that Arduino at it’s heart is software, designs, and ideas.

          A company being paid to take those exact ideas and specifications are effectively following a recipe. It seems absolutely silly to think someone will try and claim ownership over another’s recipe just because they’ve been “exclusively baking” that recipe for years. They still didn’t create the recipe.

          And as we’ve seen with the easy access to counterfeits and compatibles, what Arduino SRL is doing is in no way unique or special, or specifically integral to the growth and spread of Arduino in a way that another boardhouse could not easily replicate.

    1. Arduino LLC thought it up, they were the fathers of the project. SRL were the manufacturers with close ties, but just because you make a thing, doesn’t make the idea yours.

      I’m on the LLC side. Or chinese clones.

    2. long story short: Mr. Banzi is the good boy (the founder). The other, the bad guy, is ex-friend turned into bad guy because want make pile of money and did Arduino SRL. Now he start this game of F.U.D., cloning the website, sending around mail, ecc ecc.

      stay away from evil, dude.

    3. It boils down to this; they did something they really shouldn’t have (trademarked the Arduino name) and finally decided they weren’t going to continue to pay royalties on something they felt was theirs. The reason they shouldn’t have trademarked it? They were simply the hardware manufacturer, not the guys that actually came up with the initial concept behind Arduino and wrote the software that makes it work.

      1. Arduino SRL regestered trademark in Italy and Arduino LLC in USA at later date. Are trademark in one country valid in another country? Is there something like international trademark?

        1. No. Trademarks are yours where you register them first. As for the US if you can demonstrate you used the mark before somebody registered it, then the registration doesn’t prevent you from using it. This means, if Arduino SRL, formerly Smart Projects SRL, can demonstrate they used in the US the mark before Arduino LLC, then they can keep on using it also in the US. There do exist International TM registrations under Madrid’s Protocol (see, but they’re eventually registered country by country, although all at once.

    4. From what I’ve read the Founder who is part of Arduino Sel registered the Arduino name in Italy early in the life of Arduino and didn’t tell the founders until years later. Since all were friends it looked like the name was in safe hands.
      Arduino Srl were a licenced manufacture of the Arduino so Arduino LLC got a licence free for each Arduino sold. Arduino Srl is the ‘Made in Italy’ manufacturer.

      Now Arduimo Srl is saying they own the Arduino name because they registered it in Italy and have also stopped
      pauing licencing fees to Arduino LLC. If I’ve understood this correctly it means for the past few years Arduino LLC has received no revenue from the sale of any Arduino branded boards.
      Arduino LLC was set up to licence the Arduino name.
      I read that the LLC was looking to have more licenced manufacturers which could lead to lower prices Arduinos for customers.
      If this happens it would undermine Arduino LLCs ability to sell their boards at the high premium they are currently selling them at.
      An Arduino Srl Uno costs about £25.00 while a compatible which, if the name Arduino isn’t use is completely legal costs about £6.00. So, there lols like there is room for a new manufacturer to pay the licence fee and still price their product at less than £25.00 and have a profitable business.
      You could see how this might hurt Arduino Srl if they didn’t want to compete.

      1. If Arduino SRL paid licence fees to Arduino LLC in past years, it means they recognized the facto Arduido LLC as the owner of the trademark. It will be a hard case to pretend and defend the contrary now.

        1. This is where it gets really murky. Since [Gianluca Martino] of SRL was an Arduino LLC founder and member, the way the royalties were paid may not be as straightforward as would otherwise be the case.

          No matter which side wins in the end, it’s a cautionary tale about why your firm needs clear accounting, and to be fair I imagine that the whole business evolved so quickly that none of the parties involved were thinking legally / strategically at the time.

          1. When working on a small hobby project with a group of friends noone worries too much about the legal details. Indeed if they did spend too much time worrying about them the project may never get off the ground.

            Then the project goes viral, things get much bigger but still things are ok as long as the founders remain friends.

            Then one of the founders falls out with the others and this sort of things happens.

    5. It’s clear to me that the model from the earliest days was that Arduino LLC would license out the Arduino branding to board builders. Arduino SRL was merely the first. Now they are claiming they are the “only” and the “one true Arduino.”

        1. Sorry to necro this but the difference is that Windows is that windows is a product and IBM makes another product that works with windows while Arduino is not a product as it is not for sale but the boards are. In my opinion it is like someone claiming that Android can only run on Samsung phones as they make android phones

          1. @Sheogorath No, I know that Arduino Software exists but it is not a product. A product as defined by Merriam Webster is something that is made or grown to be sold or used with the full definition of being something that is marketed or sold as a commodity. While Arduino exists as software, that software is not being sold unlike the hardware.

            BTW. I’m posting here because we appear to have reached the end of the rabbit hole.

          2. @ Jacob: You’re correct that Arduino isn’t a product according to the definition you gave, but neither is Android according to the same definition. However, it’s clear what you did if you go to the second definition of that entry: a thing or person that is the result of an action or process.
            Basically, you cherry-picked from a dictionary, and became so obsessed with using it to prove me wrong that you didn’t stop to read long enough to realise that software is a thing that is the result of a process whether or not it is sold, thus fitting the dictionary definition of a product. Simples!

    1. Yes, it is ……
      Take a good idea, make it a good product, earn a lot of money (and I mean a LOT), and you’ll see that nothing will resist it.
      Including friendship bonds.

      As said before, no good or bad guys here. Only money.

      BTW, how about *real* open source products ?

  2. Anonymous story (as we are still checking some stuff with our lawyer):

    Some months ago, they (Dangi Internet Electronics S.L. from Gianluca Martino) tried to make us (we were an arduino distributor before this) sign a contract that make us pay 100.000 EUR if we dared to sell boards named arduino that weren’t manufacturer by them.

    We refused and thus stopped being arduino distributor for them (but not on the official website of course, and I understand why now). We are glad we didn’t sign this, but all other distributors agreed to sign their crap and are now stuck with them :)

    1. Same happened to us, we refused to sign this ridiculous contract and are living since then the life after Arduino (which brought to us a lot of exciting things).

      1. If either of you have anything concrete on this, my dear anonymous friends, send something in to the tips line!

        Seriously. We’ve only gotten on this story because our readers / contributors pushed us some juicy tidbits.

    2. That may explain some cryptic comments made by moderators on Adafruit’s forum.

      It may be that they signed the contract, and now they’re finding out after the fact that all this infighting was going on behind the scenes, and they are justifiably angry that the .cc team didn’t let them in on what was going on before they signed on the dotted line, because now they’re going to be on the hook for $100K if they manufacture Arduino boards themselves.

      This may also explain the existence of boards like the “Pro Trinket” they’ve been pushing which bear only the Adafruit name.

      1. It’s not even about Adafruit manufacturing boards themselves: by doing this, Smart Projects SRL just ensured Adafruit and others can’t buy Arduino-branded boards manufactured under license by Arduino LLC. Wow.

        And if the international trademark’s upheld, they can’t buy boards from Smart Projects SRL either, because they don’t have the trademark. So, nothing Arduino-branded for Adafruit or others.

        The collective Arduino couldn’t have shot themselves in the foot harder if they tried.

    3. Sounds like Arduino SRL would be sued into oblivion if they lose this lawsuit. You can’t just claim to be superman and jump off a building hoping the NAME will make you fly.
      Huawei doesn’t claim they’re google because they make android phones.

    4. Also an anonymous distributor here. They have never sent me or asked me to sign this new contract, but still list my company on as a distributor. The old contract we have at the moment has no mention of this 100.000 EUR clause or

      The most fraudulent aspect of this is that without the news being broken out by sites like hackaday or Make, we would have no idea of this crap. I’m afraid that many distributors have signed a contract in the belief that they are dealing with Arduino as it has always been and this seems to be what the people behind seem to be counting on. Hiding everything under the rug and claiming to be representing the Arduino community in order to trick the distributors (with a contract) onto their side.

      A lot of the big generic electronics distributors who have Arduino as just another product probably don’t even care about this, or don’t even react to this email they have received, unlike the smaller companies that are tightly tied into the community itself.

      I know bigger players like Sparkfun and Adafruit are refraining from saying anything about this, but they probably know something we don’t. So it’s not just the Arduino customers who are extremely frustrated about this situation, this affects hundreds of small businesses around the world. So right now we are just selling the old stock we have (marked and waiting on any news of how to actually be an official distributor of a product called Arduino that actually supports the project.

      1. Distributors who were persuaded to sign a contract with Dodgy Projects Srl have been cheated. I wonder if they could get together in a class action against Smart Projects Srl on the basis that the other party misrepresented their position as ‘Real-Honest-Just-The-Same-as-before-Arduino’ to get them to sign when they were not the ongoing commmunity project. They might even get crowd funding to see off the cheats. :)

  3. And here the hammer falls. I will guess that in the end, the LLC will lose, because they don’t have the money or income stream, even though the papers SEEM to indicate that the SRL (formerly S. P. SRL) was licensing the name from the LLC.

    In the US, (IANAL, but have been involved in a circumstance that relates) I would not be surprised if the name change by the SRL will be found to be deceptive, due to the LLC holding the trademark. I have no clue is the SRL registering the trademark in Italy will have any affect there, but there is a LONG history of no caring about trademarks registered in a different jurisdiction, as Apple has found, and others as well, a number of times in the last few years.

    1. If Srl gets to keep Italy and LLC gets the USA I have a feeling LLC will be considered a winner. It does mean for those of us outside of either jurisdiction we’ll have to look at the manufacturer location and decide if on Srl or LLC biased.

  4. The factors that made Arduino successful are its software, its community, its website, its forums, its product research, its whole identity and the true passion that Massimo Banzi and his team put into all of those. Whoever manufactured the boards is just a supplier (and Arduino was successful *despite* boards were often poorly manufactured in the past).
    But this is not the point. This is the story of five friends and co-founders, having equal 20% shares of the company, where one of them (who was already earning more than the others thanks to the manufacturing income) suddenly decided to trademark Arduino at his own name engaging a war against his co-founders and tell the world he controls 100% of the project. This is crazy, insulting and very very sad.

  5. The great thing about the Arduino ecosystem is its open source/ open hardware platform. While I have purchased many Official Arduino boards in the past to support Arduino creators, most of the ones I purchase now are clones. Others I just make myself! I love the AVR based Arduino boards. I feel that the ARM/MIPS based ones like the Due, Zero and yun are overpriced. For ARM the Teensy boards, Launchpad boards (with energia) and mbed based boards are my goto platforms. Many of these boards can be had with IDE, programmer / debugger for around $15.

    1. Approximately zero. Arduino users might upgrade to ARM boards eventually, but they’re overkill for something that only really needs an 8 bit micro. And there is no reason to switch from AVR to PIC at all… It would just be a waste of time.

      1. The price for a decent ARM is low enough!
        Stm32 have nice hardware, with lots of power and possibilities, and a very cheap possibility to debug them.
        No more printf debug and led code toggling :-)
        Seeing the values of a variable, is like seeing the daylight for the first time in your life.
        Have a look at them!
        I also thought like you, coming from AVR. Then I was introduced to STM32 by high-school, and I was in love <3

        1. Not only that, but being able to debug when you don’t have the startup code working correctly, a postmortem after a crash or play with the I/O registers… Serial I/O debugging doesn’t work for those situations where a newbie can run into easily.

      2. I disagree that switching chips is a waste of time. Its always good to have more than one way to complete a project. And when choosing among several similar product (avr vi arduino, msp430 via energia or pic via pinguino), they each have one or two minor advantages over the others. Being familiar with all and able to use each only helps you in the long run.

      3. I think AVRs are overpriced too, and Arduino SRL boards certainly are. You can get arm chips for < 1$, with much greater flexibility. Why use an expensive 8-bit when you can use a cheaper, often lower power, 32-bit one.

    2. Ugh they really need to move that damn report button D:
      Why do they put report where 90% of the internet puts reply ~.~
      Anyhow ignore that report …..

      I would guess it is far more likely that people will actively start moving over to clone boards and many people who wouldn’t touch clone boards before will find themselves much more open to the idea.

      1. I think it’s likely that nearly all of the Arduino users won’t even hear about this legal battle, or won’t care about it if it they do, and will just continue on as they always have. The users who do care will be knowledgeable enough to buy from the supplier they feel is the “right” one…or they’ll just already be using clones and generic AVRs.

  6. I don’t see how Smart Projects could get away with registering a logo as a trademark by copying an identical logo owned by another organisation. Is the Arduino logo also protected under copyright laws? There is no reference to Smart Projects or it’s registered logo on any of the boards that I can see. What I see on the boards is an Arduino and logo with the trademark indication, and as the point of contact.

    Seems like an easy case to solve.

    I think the attitude of Smart Projects is the same as any company that want to take on business and turn dreams in to really.

    Court might decide that there have been only one Arduino business, and all the founders are valid legal partners owning equal share of the business. Awesome.

    1. The name, logo etc are all protected under copyright by default. And in most jurisdictions are considered trademarks by the initial users of them. Lawyers win as usual.

        1. Of course you can copyright a logo — it’s an artistic work. I don’t know how it is handled when the creator of the logo (the de facto holder of the copyright) is not part of the company that is trying to use it as a trademark, though.

          1. Very easy: it is usually done as a work for hire and the copyrights are transferred to the paying party.
            It certainly is a work of art and thus eligible for copyright protection.

    1. Not that easy… if you buy one on ebay from a small seller that doesnt make Joe Durango from Dubuque, Iowa ‘the real arduino’. Buy one from Adafruit and that doesnt make adafruit ‘the real arduino.

      Arduino belongs to the community from which it came. LLC was continuing on as it has been for years and it was only because of aggressive moves with hostile intentions on SRLs part that this is happening.

      Essentially it’s a hostile corporate takeover where one person with 20% control is trying to strong arm his one time friends and partners out because he wants to get paid on the back of the community that has done all the real work.

      Unless SRL intends to implement a royalty system from who commited to the OSS and OSH repos then they are scum that needs to be ostracized from having anything to do with this or any other Open project.

      Legal thievery.

  7. As someone that has never actually touched the GUI or one of the mythical boards, could someone please explain what the value add is over avr-gcc and binutils?

    I always assumed it to be a loose collection of C++ classes that wraps AVR functionality together with some nicely made hardware with an on board USB to serial interface and a not-very-good boot loader. That being the case there’s nothing much tangible to tie the software to the hardware. Why the squabble over a stupid name?

    1. Your first sentence is a lot like saying “as someone who’s never touched a molex connector or a crimping tool, could someone tell me what the value add is over the western union splice and solder?”

      It’s a powerful tool for a specific situation and calling it “stupid” and “not-very-good” when you admit having never even tried out the device just shows the kind of grognard ignorance that somehow always pops up every time something new and interesting happens in the electronics community.

      1. The comment and question posed by nes were reasonable and politely stated and would be perfectly well understood by professionals with many years experience in embedded computing.

        Maybe the type of stupidity you refer to may be better explained by someone not properly reading a comment before attacking the poster. Perhaps you would care to re-read his comment and ammend yours since he wasn’t calling a platform he admits to not having used ‘stupid’. Instead he retained that epithet for the “squabble over a stupid name”.

    2. The code is easy to read and understand and a very friendly and patient community to beginners! Example: If I’m a carpenter with an idea I can really easy realize it with Arduino in limited spare time, even after month I understand my code. Not the Hardware, but the software and community makes it so powerfull.

    3. The value is in the package. Go buy any one of 100 different Arduinos, buy any one of 100 different shields, get home, plug in, code and hit play and you’re away. It’s not all about the software. The hardware and the common platform is what gives it its ease of use.

      By comparison with avr-gcc you lack a platform. You can buy into a platform but they are not common. They don’t all have compatible clocks or identical boot loaders (speaking of, the Arduino bootloader does exactly what it’s supposed to which is load code on the micro. Calling it “not-very-good” is a big strange given that everything simply works out of the box).

      What’s the squabble over a stupid name? That stupid name is worth more on paper than any project you or I could ever make. There is a reason people go to court (an expensive and lengthy ordeal) to assign these rights.

    4. Because the name has brand recognition and is therefore valuable to the ones with legal control over it.

      The originators of the name want control so they can have a licensing stream to fund further development. The secondary taker, the SRL, is looking to take over that licensing stream and possibly use name control to introduce a device that is proprietary, pulling the market from a shared one to a single source one.

      Mythical, not-very-good, stupid name. Seems like trolling.

    5. OK… I’ll bite…

      Originally, it filled a big hole in the market. The not-very-good boot loader (I’ll second that) was much, much better than anything else available when the Arduino hit the scene, because it wasn’t tied to a proprietary tool chain or proprietary hardware. There were better things on the market for the pro, but for the hobbyist and education markets, they were pretty much priced out. The things that were available for that market (like the Basic Stamp, the LEGO stuff, etc) all had major drawbacks, such as price,performance, versatility, or other.

      My preference at this time leans towards the TI devices for the lower performance end (MSP430) in straight C. In large part due to my background punching assembler on 8051, Z80/8085/80X86. Never much a PIC fan, and don’t love the AMTEL processors, for a number of reasons.

      For someone starting out, the Arduino is a much better choice that what I would use, and is suitable for a wide variety of tasks from simple to fairly advanced. Most hobbyists, and many sorta-pros, will never need to leave the playpen, as it is a well designed, versatile playpen, with minimal performance hit. If they do need to, they can, without starting over, as they would need to on many other platforms (like the Stamp)

      Today, there are other things that are making a dent in the same market hole in various ways, like the Propeller and BeagleBone, but I tend to doubt that, over even the medium term, anything will displace Arduino, as there is now a tremendous literature and experience base for the beginner, an it isn’t likely to develop for another platform without a need.

      In the industry, an analogy might be IBM-PC vs Mac vs Amiga, back in the day. For many things, Amiga was the best of the bunch, but the PC had entrenchment and was good enough, with the Mac meeting the need where the PC didn’t. (ignoring al of the other issues involved…) The Mac had a period where its survival was questioned, as well. Loyalty and market specialization really helped keep it alive (in my opinion)

  8. I’m with Arduino LLC on this one. Yes, Arduino sounds like an Italian word, but America has a history of Italian immigration. Plus the fact that the originators of an idea will often license the IP to official manufacturers when they have no manufacturing facilities themselves. Smart Projects SRC better get their act together in case a judge or jury recognises what I have and they get a severe smackdown in court.

    1. Arduino LLC and Arduino SRL (formerly Smart Projects SRL) are both italian companies. Arduino LLC owns the trademark everywhere but Italy, while Arduino SRL owns the Italian trademark.

        1. I did; here’s what the USPTO shows:
          A trademark filed April 7 2009, registered March 5, 2011, owned by Arduino LLC:
          A trademark on the logo filed October 4, 2010, registered March 20, 2012, owned by Arduino LLC:
          A filing dated September 19, 2014, by Arduino SRL:
          A filing dated October 10, 2014, by Arduino LLC:

          It seems plain from that that Arduino LLC has owned the trademark in the US on both the name Arduino and the logo since 2011-2012.

          1. Those trademarks are currently being petitioned for cancellation by Arduino Srl. The grounds appear to be that Arduino Srl (formerly Smart Projects) were using the trademarks in commerce since 2005.

            So while Arduino LLC hold the marks for now, they could be overturned if Arduino Srl successfully claim prior use.

  9. The Arduino tends to be a topic of hot debate at my work, even before this whole lawsuit nonsense.

    My position on this is, I see the Arduino akin to the OOPic. It’s wildly successful and offers way for the beginner/amateur to gain access to the world of microcontrollers.

    While the Arduino bills itself as a way for non-programmers access to MCU’s and touts itself as “available” to more experienced programmers to operate under the hood. In an ideal world, that would be something everyone wants, but in the real world that’s not what happens here. Code is usually a mess, so a beginner who looks at that is going to think that’s actually normal. Even worse, there’s not really any clear cut way to get closer to the bare metal. Sorry fans, this whole mess is born out of some very vague ideas by people who, apparently, don’t have experience with writing good wrappers.

    The hardware is the same. 0.16″ spacing? Really? OK, I get that it was a mistake on the first go around, but to keep it in perpetuity? Correct the defect, eat the grumblings and issue an adapter.

  10. Smart Projects is going to find itself in a goose and golden egg situation. They want it all and won’t play nice. If they win the court case people will move away from name brand Arduino…and even sooner as many have suggested. So they still lose.

    However, its been reported (perhaps on HaD) that Arduino LLC wants to move away from having a single manufacturer, which threatens Smart Project’s bottom line. So SP are going all in on this dubious plan to usurp the name.

    While I obviously dont know the numbers, I think the best thing Gianluca Martino could have done was allow a smaller role for SP, and win on his stake in Arduino LLC as it grew.

  11. Seems a bit like RAMBUS or Makerbot or any other project where several people or companies get together to make something, then one sneakily files trademarks, patents etc then attempts to claim the whole pie.

  12. “Yes, there is a disagreement between the initial founders of the open source project (which have never been shareholders of Arduino Srl) and the actual management of Arduino Srl.” This is bad for the future of Arduino and open source software + hardware projects in general. There could be two slightly incompatible Arduino versions born from this. I may just move the Atmel Studio and avoid the dispute.

    1. There are lots of ways you can support Arduino LLC.

      The simplest would be a monetary donation. They recently adds a donation page on the software download. The donation page appears when you actually click one of the links to download the software.

      If you’re a software developer, there’s plenty of opportunity to contribute bug fixes. There are hundreds of open issues on Arduino’s GitHub issue tracker. Many aren’t really bugs, but some certainly are. Contributing features is harder, usually requiring discussion and lengthy review.

      If you’re not a really skilled software developer, but you are a competent Arduino user, you can still help greatly with testing new features. Testing and feedback from ordinary people is actually a real problem that’s been holding back a lot of awesome stuff from getting into Arduino, so you really can make quite a difference.

      To help with testing new features, look through the pending pull requests on GitHub. Many have “ArduinoBot” builds, which are complete test copies of the Arduino IDE. You just download those, like you would a normal version of Arduino and use it. But the test version will have some new feature. If you can test it and take the time to write up whether it worked or failed, and some info about what you tried and which operating system, board and other stuff you used, it really does help. Even just a “I tried XYZ and it worked perfectly” is incredibly helpful.

      Here’s a couple specific pending features I’ve contributed, which are currently stalled for lack of testing…

      If you have a 4K monitor or other high-DPI display, this one lets you enlarge the buttons and fonts that normally aren’t configurable. As more people get 4K screens, this will become more important…

      Here’s another one which improves the way Arduino discovers which libraries your sketch needs. It tries to figure out SD requires SPI, without you having to include SPI in your sketch.

      You’ve almost certainly used the Serial Monitor and had to reopen it after uploading. Here’s someone else’s feature to keep the serial monitor open.

      This feature is easy to implement for Uno, but really hard to make work perfectly for some other boards like Leonardo and Due’s native port. Each operating system can behave very differently too, so user testing and feedback is really important on this one.

        1. This is the wrong attitude. You should contribute to OS projects to help the USERS, not to help (or hurt) some vendor.
          A healthy ecosystem has room for more than one vendor. The saddest thing about this situation is that there really ought to have been “enough success to go around”…
          And it remains to be seen whether SRL has the SW expertise/resources to “just pull in changes.” Maintaining a parallel SW repository is more difficult than most people think. (easiest example: any changes to the .cc “arduino core” would have to be ported to the Arduino Zero, not just “pulled”)


    So we are Arduino are we? Despite earlier statements by Arduino SRL that you are Arduino? Fine fine, superfluous rhetoric aside, If “WE” made Arduino what “it is today” and if “WE” get to continue to make it what it will be in the future, then “WE” will choose that “YOU”, Arduino SRL, will have nothing to do with the maker/hacker community for there is no room for frivolous litigious asshattery in the open-everything community.

    Now, with all due respect, off you fuck please.

  14. Easy solution: Arduino LCC adds an entry to the license of the Arduino software that forbids it to run on boards made by Arduino SRL. This will of cours not stop anyone from doing so, but this would put SRL in a pickle since they are the “real” Arduino but cannot (oficcialy) run Arduino software!

      1. Well.. SRL doesn’t want to pay royalities for the software they are using and are entirely dependent uppon, and this “practice” (ie: licensing software) is quite common, so I don’t see why it should be anti-competitive and be dragged into courts. Other manufacturers of Ardiuno board (except China rip-offs of course) would also need to pay, so why should not SRL do so too?

        1. Ah, but I see they claim licensing fees for using the name and the brand and not for using the software, that would of course make this option impossible. I thought they used a dual license (GPL for hackers, paid for comercial).

    1. The open source licenses already in use (GPL & LGPL) do not allow this sort of restriction.

      In theory, new versions could be distributed under a different license. But in practice, huge portions of the code came from many different contributors, most of whom would not consent to such a change. Even if those parts could be replaced, straying so far from the spirit of software freedom & open source would likely sour Arduino’s relationship with everyone.

  15. whatever court will decide…
    Darwins Law[TM] will let survive the “fit” part of Arduino. My bet is that it will not care from which “board manufacturere”, nor about “original” fuss.

    my very own formula in short: LLC = Lovely Lovely Cute vs. SRL = Shitstorm, Rape’n’Lynch’em

  16. I would do business with Banzi but not Musto.
    I don’t feel that everything needs to be manufactured in China, but ethics in business doesn’t depend on where the business is located. I also will never understand the Italian legal system.

    All in all I think using the Eclipse IDE makes the most sense.

    1. In this case, Smart Projects Srl was paying Arduino LLC up until some time within the past year; this is more or less spelled out in the court case that Arduino LLC has filed in US court. Smart Projects Srl (no matter what they may be calling themselves now) is in breach of contract for failing to hold up their side of the agreement, thus not the true Arduino.

  17. Well, I finely found a slight point of sympathy for Smart Projects. I’ve been on the other side of that “Oh, you’re not really a partner; you’re just a contract manufacturer (or SW developer.) We could replace you with anyone. In fact, I think we will.” It’s not a good feeling. It may depend on “Arduino Srl continues to be the only designer” – how much actual “design” was done by Smart Projects. One looks at the Uno and thinks that there isn’t a lot of design involved (which is true), but there are more complex boards now. I can even see “These Uno boards are absorbing most of our manufacturing capacity, and they’re not even a good showcase of our capabilities. Potential clients think we’re a joke hobbyist manufacturer instead of being impressed.”
    Their response still seems rather inappropriate…
    (In my case, things were in much earlier stages. Lawyers were paid, I (the “SW team”) and the would-be company parted, each thinking they could do without the other, and no product ever saw the light of day. Sigh. Probably one of the best things that ever happened to me.)]

    1. Absolutely! My wild-ass guess is that Smart Projects had their back against the wall. If Arduino LLC starts licensing out to cheaper factories, they’re cooked. With the clones eating away at them on the other front, they were/are really in a hard place.

      As for co-design work, there was definitely some of that as well. The Yun design, for instance, came in through Musto’s Dog Hunter / Linino companies. One hopes they received adequate compensation for their design work.

      Whether that gives them rights to the trademark is something else, though. Yeah, it’s a sad mess.

  18. Anyone feel like making a petition?

    I can feel your eyes rolling!

    I don’t expect it to make much impact on the court case, but I suspect we could put some real pressure on Arduino SRL and make them at least uncomfortalble… (I feel like at least being a big fat meanie to them right now)

    Perhaps a petition with the option to say you (as an individual, maker, whatever) ‘recognize’ as the ‘real’ arduino, will never buy an arduino branded thing ever again if win, will continue to support even if they have to re-brand, or any combination thereof? (remember the auto-generate message feature that let you generate a message to the FCC? this could even be a simple tick-the-boxes Google form…)

    If enough people like this more gung-ho approach I’ll check back later and might just go whip up a Google form for shits and giggles…

  19. Hopefully everyone here knows this is all about MONEY. Doesn´t matter the community, doesn’t matter the users, doesn’t matter the Arduino brand, they are all fighting over the MONEY. Otherwise, the Massimo Banzi’s side of it would simply give the name Arduino away and rename the same fu**** s*** as MyDuino or ItalyDuino or whatever.

    But no, because (of course) both sides see the potential (MONEY) this brand has on the market, so none of them wants to lose it.

  20. I mentioned for a few years that they were’nt in ‘for the community’ but for the money; all these guys really wanted all along was to sell boards, and that’s all.
    I know, because 5+ years ago I made an arduino emulator in simavr, and proposed an integration with the arduino IDE, and the response I got was ‘huh why, there’s no hardware involved’.
    The ‘community’ thing was milked, and still is — and of course they are not the only one, the ‘open XXX community’ is still a good way of raking in money.

    Oh BTW, back then I started called that setup “Arduidiots” instead, go ahead, you can use it too, won’t TM it, honest ;-)

  21. Arduino is one of the most successful open source projects out there. Unlike Makerbot, they’ve managed to overcome the drawbacks of being open very well so far. It seems the virus of greed is everywhere and I really despise the attitude of this guy in charge of Smart Projects Srl, because the Arduino project is now probably doomed thanks to the noise and uncertainty he has just introduced.

  22. I think we need to push Sparkfun and Adafruit into making a decision and stance on this, to support Arduino LLC. To ensure the products purchased or built support them and not SRL. SRL cannot afford Lawyers if their money dries up.

    1. I wouldn’t try pushing Adafruit. I had my posts deleted and got permanently banned for raising the subject! The only response I got to my questions was a lot of corporate BS. Their attitude seems to be “we’ll keep selling boards until a court tells us not to and we don’t give a damn what you think”, so I don’t think Adafruit care at all about the future of Arduino, as long as they can profit from selling boards. That is all in my opinion of course.

      1. I like Adafruit but I don’t work for them and just needed to say this is WRONG! Recent communications (e.g. last few Ask and Engineer episodes) have firmly outlined their support for Arduino LLC, in fact, they are now manufacturing an Arduino LLC officially licensed product, the Arduino GEMMA.

        All credit to Adafruit. They are supporting the good guys.

  23. Perhaps this is the reason for the changes in how other hardware is added in the latest Arduino software release? Change some stuff around on the board design, have a different board house churn them out with a download link. Totally destroy the value in the “uno” name by making dozens of better varients, all made by different places with different names. Then the uno will just be one of many?

    1. I’ll bet you do actually care who the real Arduino is when it’s time to download working & well supported software to use with those cheap Chinese clones you bought.

  24. As one of business persons involved in this industry, I have a little sympathy with Smart Projects SRL. I think I can understand how Gianluca felt when the company was cut off by Massimo as if the company was just a contract manufacturer after invested a bunch of money for its Arduino factory with SMT line, employees and marketing expenses.

    The “Arduino SRL is only and true Arduino” should be bogus. However, Arduino LLC is not real Arduino also. Either companies are the *half* of Arduino. What we called Arduino was a joint business with two companies, where Smart Projects SRL was in charge of hardware design and manufacturing and Arduino LLC was in charge of software development.

    It is not that simple bad guy and good guy story.

    1. “when the company was cut off” – did that happen? If so, when? So far, I’ve only read that LLC “wanted” to expand the list of manufacturers, but so far they haven’t actually done that (unless you count sparkfun and adafruit), and there is currently no “other” manufacturer. Maybe SRL thought their piece of pie would shrink a lot with competition, and maybe they were right, but there were a lot of possibilities other than “cut off.”

      1. Okay, I did not mean that it was already done by Massimo, and it was to cancel something like a “contract”. According to some articles outside Hack-a-day, Massimo tried or wanted to expand the list of manufacturers, and it means to shrink or kill the Gianluca’s factory.

    2. I agree with you.

      Based on the information I have seen to date, it seems to me that Banzi basically stole the Wiring concept from one of his own students. He encouraged him to open source it, and then immediately took that now-free code and used it to form a business – which he DID NOT cut his student in on.

      E-mails attached to the court complaint as exhibits indicate that Gianluca said he wanted to control the hardware business from the start. He said if they wanted to change that deal, he would entertain a discussion, but he did NOT say that he agreed in advance to whatever arbitrary decision might be made, in such a hypothetical conversation. None of the email history shows Banzi or the others taking him up on this, or correcting it.

      Fast forward to last year. Banzi wants to cut Gianluca out of the captain’s chair. At this point, Banzi has been heavily invested in Arduino manufacturing for nearly ten years. He has a lot of skin in the game. What skin does Banzi have in the game? Or the other three original founders? It wasn’t their factory that made the boards. Did they pay Gianluca any of the money that was required to tool up for production, to acquire the massive resources necessary to mass-produce the boards?

      Smart Projects was the company that put its own finances on the line, AND managed collection of royalties from distributors. What did Banzi do, besides abusing his own student’s trust to make money? Did he put money up to retool the factory and make all the agreements happen? Or did he just route other peoples’ open source work from one location to another, and make money jetting all over the world to do Arduino-based consulting?

      The reporting on this story is so ridiculously one-sided. The majority of people seem to favor Banzi. I do not. I think both the prosecution AND the defense have dirty hands. When I look at Gianluca’s contribution, it seems highly probable to me that he put more into this than the others.

      Seriously… designing some boards, running some forums, doing PR work, etc… how does this compare to handling the day-to-day operations of a board manufacturing facility? Given what I know today, it seems more likely that Banzi and the rest are essentially ticks, leeching off Gianluca’s work. Now they’re tired of Gianluca, and they want to replace him with cheaper options that can be dismissed the second they become remotely difficult, now that all the hard work is done. I can hardly blame Arduino SRL for no longer paying royalties.

      1. I agree, that the world is not always as black or white as it seems on the frist. But the core value of “Arduino” is the single place of reference – dilluting and duplicating (in a ambigous way) this to multiple places will massivly reduce the value of the complex.
        Yes, I understand that loosing the monopoly for production is an huge issue. But why did Ginaluca sell the company if he belives so much in it and why do you pay royalties to somebody who has no rights on your brand?

        Honestly, my sympathy is with Banzi. Because he is the face of what I belived to be Arduino and Ginaluca is an anonymous businessmen who sold his business to somebody I never have heard before.
        I would propose to change the name and offer Arduion SRL still the exclusive rights to produce the existing (Atmel) board families (if they want to produce them), but to enforce the opening to new layouts and core brands (Beagleboards, ESP8266, …) to broaden the base of the community.

  25. Well folks, I hate to suggest it but maybe it’s time for the open source community and all of us hobbyists and “hackers” to steal a page from the corporate world game book. What am I talking about?? Since the open source group writes all the operating code and made the designs of the Arduino they should see if they can develop a “firmware update” or patch to the base code such that the money grabbing hardware house is stuck with boards and designs that simply stop working as they should! BLACK LIST their hardware! They want to be Arduino let them develop new workable firmware and don’t clue them into future hardware design improvements. leave them with the boards and code of the moment and move a bit out of the norm, make the firmware do some type of pattern recognition routine that can tell the Arduino boards made by the Italian fools or new authorized boards made free of their dribble. The hard part would be to keep people with older boards working and happy while making any future boards produced by the Italian group fail to work with any future projects, shields, or updated versions of the Arduino that the open source group releases after the “MANDITORY PATCH” is released!!
    The only thing I can figure out to do would be some type of huge exchange program to give new version hardware to those that want it for minimal costs. Oh YEA ONE more point — GET A NEW BOARD MANUFACTURER AND MAKE SURE THEY SIGN LEGAL AND BINDING CONTRACTS!!
    Just an idea don’t know if it would actually be do able BUT I HATE people that hijack the work and efforts of others and try to bully the true inventor(s) out of their work and ideas! Good luck folks!

    1. Actually, when SRL changed the USB VID in the boards it was selling through distributors, user started to complain that the LLC IDE was no longer recognizing their boards. Theoretically, this was LLC’s big chance to implement what you suggest. Instead, they DID THE RIGHT THING for their customers by adding .inf driver support for the new VID and supporting those boards as well as the LLC boards. They also wrote some (rather lengthy) code to pop up a warning about the illegitimate state of the boards, but you can turn that off. Perhaps they learned something from the FTDI fiasco.

      So get that straight: SRL changed the VID on shipping legacy arduino boards such that newly purchased boards were no longer recognized by existing IDE installations. LLC changed the IDE to accommodate users who got those boards. ACTIONS like these speak louder than STATEMENTS when you’re trying to figure our which side you support.

  26. What makes people buy genuine Arduino boards for incredible amount of money instead of buying its clones and counterfeits on ebay, aliexpress and dx? There’s really no difference at all. Arduino has opensourced its designs and there’s nothing to complain about the fact that every chinese farmer produces boards in his basement and sell them. What Arduino SLR supposed to do? Who care about it?

    1. You ask what makes people spend extra for a genuine board, as if doing so is rediculous. Perhaps you should instead ask what kind of a person can’t even comprehend why others choose to contribute or donate to a cause, or “give a little back” to a others who’ve helped them?

      Really, if you buy cheap clones, you’re merely frugal.

      But if it’s incomprehensible to you that so many other people in the world can be appreciative, that they can feel a sense of connection to a good cause, that they’re willing to spend extra to contribute to a project will in turn help others, maybe you should think about what that inability to understand such emotions says about you as a human being?

      1. My first UNO board I bought at a radio shack in my home town.. Mind you i didn’t touch it for a while.. but once i got around to using it, I bought clone boards from then on (but will fall-back to the ‘prime’ UNO if something doesn’t work right on a chinese clone board.

    2. I think original (as Made in Italy Arduino s.r.l. bords) are built with high quality standard, in a factory respecting the workers and the environment. You could buold lower quality Chinese products without liability.

      Peeople semms that for a lower price is possible to back stab your friend and close an eye on what happens at workers.
      I’ll support made in Italy Arduino boards because of this.

  27. So much hand wringing over something that by default we are passive to, and whatever the outcome is the consumer isn’t going to be hurt as far as I can tell. As long AVR microprocessors are manufactured and there’s a substantial bass desiring to use them, development boards are going to be manufactured. Yea there are going to be lawyers that are going to make money, but is silly to hate on the lawyers, lawyers don’t get involved unless others concerned about their own revenue involve them.

  28. In reality this whole fiasco isn’t that important for the hobbyists sitting at home playing with their blink sketches but for those that develop Arduino for a living it’s a big deal indeed. If LLC don’t win this then you’d have to have some pretty poor risk management skills to keep the platform anywhere on your critical path, and while I don’t fancy re-designing every single Arduino-based piece of equipment that I’ve developed for my clients over the past 3 years I’m certainly not going to trust SRL again after what they’ve done here. Hell, I’ll go back to programming PICs if I have to.

  29. Such a battle on such a bad name. Arduino was never a catchy name anyway (ask Dave Jones if you don’t believe me). Time for Banzi to come up with a better name, bring the whole community to the new name and after a year, these SRL assholes will end up broke, with nothing but a bad name and some boards, and the rest of us keep making projects on the platform.

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