Is Arduino really Open Hardware?

[pachuma]

A while ago I saw the video from where Dave talked about Open Hardware and produced a nice little board called Arduino, I think it is post #45. Another interesting video from Dave was that explaining what Open Hardware is, and he summarized it very well:

• the source CAD files should be available for people to download freely and should be opened with, ideally a free EE CAD program.

I was a bit surprised to see that the Arduino UNO files (Rev 3 of the board), till recently where not available. Furthermore, they have now published a buggy CAD file (both schematic and PCB)!

I saw today a few tweets from Mr Banzi clearly showing the direction, and concept that he has of the Arduino Open Hardware. As a matter fact, I think that the statements are more oriented to a business shareholder worried about loosing market share on the launch of their star product, more than to the spirit behind the open source community.

I don't know, I just wanted to post a few captures of the tweets that I found very interesting and, at some points, perhaps a bit insulting. I mean, taking into consideration that the entire Arduino eco system has been built around Wiring (well it is a Wiring clone, since they are also lagging behind their releases) and that the value of Arduino is all the community work gone behind it (libraries, shields, SDK, etc.), what's all this about then? If you don't want to be cloned, simply don't publish (correctly or incorrectly) your CAD files or schematics, file a patent, but don't go around saying you are an open source/hardware group that don't want to be copied.

I don't see any rumbling about the software, IDE or libraries. Is that because the dosh is not there?

So, the main question is, the IDE and libraries all seam to be open software. But, is Arduino Open Hardware?

Enough runt, here are a few captures of the tweets posted and an inspiring logo I found in the Arduino forum to match them.

Translation: cretino -> cretin

[Bored@Work]

There is a lot of money involved, and Arduino is not a charity. And when there is big money involved, when the original founders start to get greedy and have careers depended on the Arduino at stake they sometimes forget about their initial noble intentions. Such things then often lead to the point that old friends, like early adopters, are considered ballast, no longer needed, and are dropped.

By now it should also have become obvious that Arduinos aren't a great piece of engineering. They are a great piece of hype. Many have copied, changed and remixed the hardware, threw a compatible bootloader into an AVR and sold the result at a premium as an Arduino clone. The Arduino franchise might see the need to button down the hatches and keep their IP closer to their heart to continue fuel the hype and make money.

[amspire]

I think you are being a bit tough about the Arduino Uno Rev 3 board. The board was in stock for purchase from about the start of December. Files available on the arduino.cc site on Nov 29th or earlier. They needed to get their first batch of boards back for testing before they released the files, so that is an admirable effort.

Open Hardware does not require that files are available for download, but it is preferable. It is OK if people have to contact you and request the files, as long as you do make them available.

Open hardware does not mean that the whole development has to be open. I can see a real problem for Arduino if people started releasing products based on pre-production designs, particularly if they hadn't even started coding yet. They have every right to keep all the development private, as long as at some point, all the schematics, PCB layouts and code is released under an open license, and is publicly available.

They can even delay the release of the open source documentation if they want to give themselves a head start. Why not - they can do what they like. Once they do release all the documentation, it becomes open hardware.

Richard.

[Uncle Vernon]

By now it should also have become obvious that Arduinos aren't a great piece of engineering. They are a great piece of hype.

No doubt the impending Bored-Board will be hype free and address all the obvious weaknesses you see in the Arduino product and business model? It's easy to point out weaknesses in the Arduino model (there are many),what is not so easy is to emulate the penetration or success Arduino has achieved.
For all it's limitations Arduino is achieving considerable success and uptake, can you do better?

[harnon]

By now it should also have become obvious that Arduinos aren't a great piece of engineering. They are a great piece of hype.

No doubt the impending Bored-Board will be hype free and address all the obvious weaknesses you see in the Arduino product and business model? It's easy to point out weaknesses in the Arduino model (there are many),what is not so easy is to emulate the penetration or success Arduino has achieved.
For all it's limitations Arduino is achieving considerable success and uptake, can you do better?

I have to say Arduino's got me into electronics, bad engineering or not, and I don't think I'm alone!  At the start I couldn't have cared less if they were open source or not, TBH.   As I've learned more, open source has become more important as a learning tool, but I think its a nice thing to do rather than something I expect.  These days I'd prefer to pick up a PIC and thrash something out the hard way, but I still use my Arduino's for rapid prototypes (e.g. building test hardware for my telemetry software took 30seconds).

What confuses me is the hostility that seems to be more and more common to someone selling their ideas for money?  Its not like the consumer is an innocent victim, they buy the product willingly, and if people are willing to pay for it, why shouldn't the designers get some money for their time and ideas?

[westfw]

I was a bit surprised to see that the Arduino UNO files (Rev 3 of the board), till recently where not available.

Till "recently", the Rev3 board wasn't available either...

Furthermore, they have now published a buggy CAD file (both schematic and PCB)!

How so?  (Reference?  I haven't seen anything in the english-language forums.)  I've been a bit worried that the "Reference design" hasn't exactly matched the shipping boards for quite a while, but I've been hoping that that's all been withing the trademark and branding bits on the silkscreen layers.
The last time the team got "selfish" with the design (back in diecimilla days), a group of users went off and designed the "Freeduino" boards.  (I was involved.  You can still get Freeduinos as mostly-throughhole kits; an interesting niche...)  This episode was theoretically resolved with the Arduino's team satisfaction with the differences between trademarking and non-openness.  Though the no-value-added cloning business (complete with trademark infringement) has been booming since then.  Having a valid and reasonable policy doesn't seem to mean much in the presence of willful infringers, without big guns.

The "Leonardo" situation has been amusing.

is Arduino Open Hardware?

Sure.  "Open" for a design as simple as Arduino means more about "intent" than the publication of design files.  It's "open source hardware" till "cease and desist" orders (or requests) show up at the Freeduino, Seeeduino, RBBB, and etc sites...

[Bored@Work]

what is not so easy is to emulate the penetration or success Arduino has achieved.

Of course it isn't easy. You can't predict luck, and not everyone gets free marketing from Make Magazine.

What they see now is that their products, despite all the hype, are so primitive that "everyone" can clone them. In case of the Leonardo the cloners don't even need full specifications . People just interfere from sparse information what it would be like and build their own. Should it later turn out the cloners are wrong it will only take them a few days to correct that. Even if the Arduino people make last minute changes to make the clones look bad, it will only take a few days to correct that.

It could even be that they lose the power to shape and define the Arduino class of boards. A little bit similar to what happened to the IBM PC. First the cloners just made a few changes ("turbo button"). When IBM stopped to be innovative and couldn't deliver what people wanted IBM was sidelined and the cloners together with Microsoft ended up defining and shaping PC via industry groups. And they dropped the "IBM compatible" from their product names.

[Uncle Vernon]

Of course it isn't easy. You can't predict luck, and not everyone gets free marketing from Make Magazine.

Luck? I guess Coca Cola was just lucky people liked the taste too.
Free Marketing? More of this luck conspiracy is it? Couldn't just be that there was plenty being supplied that hit Make's target.

What they see now is that their products, despite all the hype, are so primitive that "everyone" can clone them.

Dead simple and yet only a few of those close ever gain traction. Could be a reason for that. hmm?

A little bit similar to what happened to the IBM PC. First the cloners just made a few changes ("turbo button"). When IBM stopped to be innovative and couldn't deliver what people wanted IBM was sidelined

Rubbish. IBM at the time became the only PC manufacturer not selling IBM compatible PCs. The moved their hardware onto a range of awkward plastic garbage and tried to flog another operating system. Evolution often goes over better than revolution, IBN shot killed of their lofty position as a PC benchmark in just a couple of years of Dodo market strategy.

[westfw]

Yeah, I'd be a bit disgruntled as an Arduino employee, with the current state of cloning.
I'd be a bit disgruntled as the USB BitWhacker Designer, having something SO close, but not be nearly as accepted.
I'd be (am) disgruntled as the Freeduino PBC deisgner, when the next rev of Arduino added features I don't have.
I'd be (am) disgruntled as varipious new boards (xmega+VNC2) are held back awaiomh what the Due is going to be like.  New boads with neat featue, as long as they're not shut down bu better implmentation frp, elsewhere;
Arduino ethernet based on thay NEW wiztek chip.  chipkit out there with embedded ethernet Mac.

But it's a rare engineer who figures out the marketing aspects of all this.  Apparently the target market is ART STUDENTS.  I don't know how to market to art students...  THen you addjust the edges so that the eecs folk aren't too offended, and stick around to help the art student...

[cybergibbons]

The "Leonardo" situation has been amusing.

What's going on with that? It was announced and then nothing.

[EEVblog]

What confuses me is the hostility that seems to be more and more common to someone selling their ideas for money?  Its not like the consumer is an innocent victim, they buy the product willingly, and if people are willing to pay for it, why shouldn't the designers get some money for their time and ideas?

They should, of course. And indeed, if they don't, then the industry as a whole doesn't grow as there is less time/money/incentive for the designers to improve the design and grow the community etc.

And as for cloners, well, although that's allowed under the OSHW definition (subject to Trademark names), it's generally considered poor form to just "clone" something and undercut the original author(s) if they are selling the identical product. You should be at least building upon the design and/or serving another market to the original design.
This isn't new to OSHW, it's been the un-written common courtesy in the magazine kit business for longer than I've been alive.

Dave.

[Bored@Work]

The game has changed. With the availability of manufacturing capabilities to almost everyone everyone can clone an Arduino without having to have much knowledge, because it is so simple. And with Asian manufacturers not feeling bound by any honor code at all, just like the PC cloners didn't feel bound by IBM rights, there are a lot of new ruthless players in town.

[george graves]

This isn't new to OSHW, it's been the un-written common courtesy in the magazine kit business for longer than I've been alive.

Sounds like all these issues have been played out before.  Would love to hear more about this on a blog.

[pachuma]

I think you are being a bit tough about the Arduino Uno Rev 3 board. The board was in stock for purchase from about the start of December. Files available on the arduino.cc site on Nov 29th or earlier. They needed to get their first batch of boards back for testing before they released the files, so that is an admirable effort.

The files that were available were corrupted, they couldn't be opened with anything. However, nor Rev 2s nor Rev 1s were available. In any case, I do share the fact that they should have an early start. I mean at the end of the day, as mentioned, that is their work.

What I do indeed share with Dave is that, cloners that simply download the CAD files and get the boards fabricated to be sold at the lowest possible profitable price is ugly. But I do think that the community is very aware of that and not supportive at all.

What I am a bit amused is by the tone that has been used and how "supportive" towards the community work, for not allowing the evolution of shields that will be fitted in Leonardo, Cretino or whatever.

How so?  (Reference?  I haven't seen anything in the english-language forums.)  I've been a bit worried that the "Reference design" hasn't exactly matched the shipping boards for quite a while, but I've been hoping that that's all been withing the trademark and branding bits on the silkscreen layers.

Here are the two errors I spotted in the schematic and in the PCB layout file. On the schematic one of the nets is not connected to anything and on the PCB layout file a trace is missing. I mean, this board would never work and anyone looking at the schematic for reference would be  mislead (specially a beginner).

What is true, is that Arduino is in hype but being such a simple design. Lets face it, a board can be derived to be fully compatible with an Arduino without having the schematics available. Just with the header files they were able to replicate what Leonardo would or will be. I mean, that board is not even commercial yet, whereas  "Leonardo's brothers" have the CAD files and added features available for downloads already.

What I think is that they are starting to be a bit concerned about how to sustain the business model with a simple to clone "OSHW" based on a rich Open Source Software project, which in term is a "clone" from Wiring. It seems a bit ironic, and curious, how the market moves and changes mind sets when there's dosh around.

[westfw]

this board would never work

It will WORK fine.  the missing (actually mislabeled) signal connection on the schematic is present (as a trace) on the board, and the missing trace on the board is in protection circuitry (varistor from USB signal to GND) that wasn't even present on Arduinos prior to Uno.  Sorta ideal for piracy detection without actually pissing off customers.  Although I'm mostly reminded of a quote, along the lines of "never blame malicious intent for behavior that can be adequately explained by carelessness."  It's not as bad as the early diecimila (?) schematics that had the D+/D- USB signals reversed.

Leonardo...  Is supposed to be a cost reduced version built around the 32u4 (with native USB support.)  When it was announced, the "technical" subgroup sorta went "oh, it's a 'teensy' on a shield-sized board."  Teensy was another 32u4 breakout board that has been around for quite a while, for which Arduino IDE support had already been written.  Then the 1.0 IDE release included "leonardo" code, which "leaked" pretty much the rest of the design.  I don't know where it's at.  I'd guess that while it seemed like a good idea to have a lower-cost Arduino, the team may hesitant about competing with themselves with a lower-profit-margin board.  Or that they're trying to do something meaningful (beyond serial) with the native USB support (like Uno was supposed to have) and are discovering lots of annoying technical/ease-of-use issues...

There is certainly a lot of Arduino's success that is more about Marketing than technical merit.  But despite what engineers in the trenches may think, there is a lot more to (good) marketing than just "hype."

See also Gosling vs Stallman (emacs) and Yeager vs cisco (Multiprotocol routing.)  A lot of things have controversy present if you dig deep enough.

[EEVblog]

And with Asian manufacturers not feeling bound by any honor code at all, just like the PC cloners didn't feel bound by IBM rights, there are a lot of new ruthless players in town.

The IBM PC was an open design, by choice. Full technical details were provided, including the ROM BIOS listing, but they did keep the ROM BIOS copyright, so it required clean reverse engineering efforts of the BIOS before the clones took off.

Dave.

[pachuma]

It will WORK fine.  the missing (actually mislabeled) signal connection on the schematic is present (as a trace) on the board, and the missing trace on the board is in protection circuitry (varistor from USB signal to GND) that wasn't even present on Arduinos prior to Uno. Sorta ideal for piracy detection without actually pissing off customers.

You are right there, it will indeed work but I don't think it is the spirit behind OSHW. I also find that mislabeled signal doesn't follow the same spirit, specially for young players trying to understand what on earth the board does.

I do share, however, the nice spirt that has been built around Arduino and find it as an ideal platform for developing the hobby, learning or even get aquatinted with the uC world. I like the wide range of knowledge base that you find in the forum and the spirit behind the people answering questions. However, I've been surprised by the statements made by one of their members.

I do agree with Daves comment regarding the ruthless Asian players adding a new variable into their equation, but those are the things that they will have to assume if they want to create a business around OSHW.

I wouldn't use the term cloning here as it implies a bit of effort however, what I would use "Crtl-C, Crtl-V" (copy paste) where no added value nor sharing is given in return.

[alm]

And as for cloners, well, although that's allowed under the OSHW definition (subject to Trademark names), it's generally considered poor form to just "clone" something and undercut the original author(s) if they are selling the identical product. You should be at least building upon the design and/or serving another market to the original design.
This isn't new to OSHW, it's been the un-written common courtesy in the magazine kit business for longer than I've been alive.

The difference between open hardware and electronics magazines is the scale. Did any of the magazine projects ever get even 1% of the Arduino sales volume? No commercial company will touch a magazine article with an unwritten license agreement, this is different with open hardware projects that can explicitly allow commercial use in a way that keeps lawyers happy. I wouldn't be surprised if the fine print of those magazines reserved all rights to the contents. From a recent(ish) issue of Elektor:

All drawings, photographs, printed circuit board layouts, programmed integrated circuits, disks, CD-ROMs, software carries and article texts in our books and magazines (other than third-party advertisements) are copyright Elektor International Media b.v. and may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, scanning an[sic] recording, in whole or in part without prior written permission from the Publisher.

So etching one of their circuit board layouts is probably not allowed unless it falls under your local fair use laws, and selling the board to others in definitely out. Not something a company like Sparkfun or Adafruit would touch with even a ten-foot pole.

[EEVblog]

The difference between open hardware and electronics magazines is the scale. Did any of the magazine projects ever get even 1% of the Arduino sales volume?

A successful magazine projects would sell in the many thousands, and that's just in Australia. The really successful ones would sell in the 10's of thousands.

No commercial company will touch a magazine article with an unwritten license agreement

Really? Tell that to Dick Smith Electronics, Altronics, Jaycar, and many other kit suppliers outside of Australia.

Dave.

[alm]

According to Wikipedia, there were about 300k Arduino units in the wild in May 2011, which is lower than I expected (seems like everyone and his dog has one by now). Not sure how exactly they measured this, and whether it includes clones. Based on the trademark thing that the clones can not be called Arduino, it's probably just the official ones. I would expect this figure to be significantly higher by now, but it looks like magazine projects did get more than 1% of its volume, maybe even 10%.

No commercial company will touch a magazine article with an unwritten license agreement

Really? Tell that to Dick Smith Electronics, Altronics, Jaycar, and many other kit suppliers outside of Australia.

Was this based on the unwritten agreement, or did they negotiate some extra license with either the magazine or the author? I assume most kit suppliers like Velleman design their own kits, but I've never done any research on this.

I wonder if open hardware designs are ever going to be used by the conventional hardware companies, like how almost all companies like IBM, Oracle and Microsoft have to some degree adopted open source software. That might change the whole dynamic, if millions of dollars, lawyers and PHBs get involved. I have a hard time imagining Samsung sticking an Arduino or uCurrent in one of their TVs or smartphones, however. For now, semiconductor manufacturers like Broadcom seem to treat it purely as a marketing tool. It's probably unlikely to be adopted since open hardware is much farther from commercial hardware than open source software is from commercial software.

[EEVblog]

Was this based on the unwritten agreement, or did they negotiate some extra license with either the magazine or the author? I assume most kit suppliers like Velleman design their own kits, but I've never done any research on this.

Unless an author specifically plastered their design with "Copyright" and mentioned that they were retaining rights in the article, then it was generally acknowledged that the kit suppliers were free to simply copy the design and sell kits, without asking the author. There was no deal with the magazine, or the authors. Except that I do believe the magazines gave the kit companies carte blanche to republish the article with the kit, even though technically the authors retained rights on the article, and magazine had no right to actually do that.
In the case of Copyright being claimed, the kit suppliers would often either buy a key part like a programmed microcontroller from the author, or they'd negotiate some sort of royalty per kit.
Sometimes, if the authors claimed copyright on the PCB layout for example, and asked that no one sell it, then it was not unheard of for the kit suppliers to re-layout the board to fit their own case or whatever. And in many cases, that was in fact common for the kit companies to change the physical design a bit to fit their own requirements.
Magazine authors accepted that when they published a project it effectively became what we now know today as "open source hardware", and others were free to sell kits, or improve or modify the design and even republish it, giving attribution of course.
And as it is today with OSHW, it was considered bad form to sell an identical kit in competition with the original author, but legally, probably technically ok.

I wonder if open hardware designs are ever going to be used by the conventional hardware companies, like how almost all companies like IBM, Oracle and Microsoft have to some degree adopted open source software. That might change the whole dynamic, if millions of dollars, lawyers and PHBs get involved. I have a hard time imagining Samsung sticking an Arduino or uCurrent in one of their TVs or smartphones, however. For now, semiconductor manufacturers like Broadcom seem to treat it purely as a marketing tool. It's probably unlikely to be adopted since open hardware is much farther from commercial hardware than open source software is from commercial software.

That has almost certainly happened already without anyone knowing. The nature of electronics design and manufacturing means that companies aren't going to actually stick an actual Arduino or uCurrent board into a product, but they certainly could use the design, or part of the design in a product if their designs saw it, and left it was the most suitable fit. Juts like companies do with application notes and reference designs etc.
Because that's how electronics product design works, you typically build upon ideas and circuits that other people have done.

Dave.

[alm]

And as it is today with OSHW, it was considered bad form to sell an identical kit in competition with the original author, but legally, probably technically ok.

I believe Australia ratified the Berne convention, which states that any work automatically becomes copyrighted with all rights reserved by the creator unless explicitly released, like in the case of a creative common license. But if everything functioned just fine and this never became an issue, great. Today sticking some sort of open license (I don't think all jurisdictions recognize public domain, though you can get close with some licenses) on it is probably essential, however, at least for companies in the US.

That has almost certainly happened already without anyone knowing. The nature of electronics design and manufacturing means that companies aren't going to actually stick an actual Arduino or uCurrent board into a product, but they certainly could use the design, or part of the design in a product if their designs saw it, and left it was the most suitable fit. Juts like companies do with application notes and reference designs etc.
Because that's how electronics product design works, you typically build upon ideas and circuits that other people have done.

I'm sure this happens. This is outside the scope of open hardware, however, since you luckily can't copyright using a low-value shunt resistor with a chopper op-amp, or sticking an AVR with an USB-UART converter and a hacky reset interface on a PCB. I guess you could patent it, and it wouldn't surprise me if it is patented in the US, but that would be quite sad. Verbatim copying of the PCB layout or schematic is probably quite rare, since that's not how hardware design operates. You don't just manufacture a bunch of independent boards and wire them together, at least not anymore.

[LukeW]

What you're saying is basically just a subset of the "They shouldn't call it Open Hardware unless they're using completely FOSS CAD/CAM/EDA software toolchains" view, which we usually just get from the Stallmanesque militant Free Software KiCAD fanboys.

The fact is, many of the world's biggest and most visible Open Hardware proponents, such as SparkFun, Arduino, Adafruit etc. are all doing everything almost entirely in Eagle, and Eagle is one of the most hobbyist-accessible electronics CAD/CAM/EDA packages in existence in terms of its relatively good dollar price compared to the big guns like Altium, usability, user experience, perfect cross-platform OS support on Linux or Windows or OSX, generous freeware evaluation version, and community support base.

KiCAD is pretty flaky in many regards... for example it's almost impossible to get it working usably on OSX.

[Bored@Work]

Europe's Elektor business model includes making a lot of money from selling their PCBs and kits, and they always made sure no one else interfered with that. They had, maybe still have, a few additional companies licensed to distribute PCBs and kits.

They have made one adjustment in recent years. In order to still get authors to submit articles authors are allowed to submit their own open source and hardware projects and are allowed to distribute their stuff outside of Elektor, too. Before that Elektor was very keen on making sure they have exclusive rights and were defending those.