Back in 2005, the Arduino was just a twinkle in they eyes of [Massimo Banzi] as well as the other core developers. since then, you can’t go to any type of electronics site without hitting something beginning with ‘ard~’ or ending with ‘~duino’. The platform has ended up being so popular, people everywhere are piggybacking on the name to the point of trademark infringement or just outright counterfeiting one of the many official Arduino boards. now [Massimo] has something to state about these clones, ripoffs, derivatives, as well as ‘duino-compatible boards.
On the listing of things poor for the open source ecosystem, [Massimo] points to direct clones of existing Arduino boards. While these boards are electrically similar to officially licensed boards, they just don’t support the Arduino job economically as well as usually don’t contribute to the existing libraries as well as code. even worse are counterfeits; these boards copy the trademarks of the Arduino job – sometimes terribly provided the three examples above (guess which one is the genuine one) – as well as directly revenue off of the Arduino job without providing any type of support in return.
There are other veins of Arduino that [Massimo] considers more acceptable. Arduino-compatible boards, seen by the lots over on Kickstarter, usually add something of their own, be it a radio chip, or an completely different microcontroller. Derivatives, like Teensy and Adafruit’s Flora actually bring new things to the table with improved hardware as well as new as well as fascinating libraries.
As far as counterfeits as well as clones go, we can’t agree more with what [Massimo] has to say. You have to admire the people in the Arduino job being so open about their creations as well as admiring the Arduino derivatives that bring some new hardware to the table. then again, that’s the lesson of the Arduino project; you can make hardware open source as well as still be outrageously popular.