We love Arduino and we, along with a large and diverse set of communities, have benefitted enormously from the breadth and depth of the Arduino family and its resources. This is an exciting era for Arduino and for open source hardware, with the debut of the first Arduino and compatible boards based on silicon level open source hardware.
However, we are deeply concerned that several recent products from Arduino are claiming to be open source but upon research, indeed do not appear to be so. Arduino, once one of the standard bearers in our community, now seems to be falling into the grey area of OSHWINO (Open Source Hardware in Name Only).
We would like to openly call for Arduino to immediately publish the missing design files and license information for these products. Even from a basic truth in advertising perspective, future products labeled as open source need to have these requirements met by their time of release. We also join in Dale’s call for bringing the Arduino Foundation into existence: it is more clear than ever that Arduino needs to renew its promise to the community.
Update: June 16, 2017 Massimo Banzi has commented on the blog post on evilmadscientist.com“Arduino is open source HW and SW. Full stop. Some files seems to be missing and I’ll inform my colleagues at .org that they need to update them.”
Free Arduino by Dale Dougherty Founder & CEO, Make: MAKE Magazine and Maker Faire.
We emailed Arduino.org to get clarification and where these files are located for the open-source hardware and software products from Arduino. Our questions (amongst many other questions are):
Are the products open source?
If so, where are the open source files?
If not, why is it not open source?
PDFs are not considered design files (https://www.oshwa.org/definition/) “The hardware must be released with documentation including design files, and must allow modification and distribution of the design files.”
The owner/author of many of these is DogHunter/Linino, not Arduino, why is that?
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
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