[p2p-research] [Open Manufacturing] Fwd: How to recognize official Arduino boards.

[Bryan Bishop]

On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 10:50 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> ryan, this is a great forward, which sheds some light on the workings of
> the arduino platform ..
>
> Arduino is an open-source project and we’re happy that so many people have
> created variations on our hardware and software. We realize, however, that
> it’s sometimes hard to tell which products are part of the Arduino platform
> itself. The official boards are listed on the hardware page<http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Hardware>(and pictured above, with the exception of the official shields and Mini-USB
> adaptor). These are the products that we feel provide the best overall
> experience and utility to the Arduino community. They include boards from
> three manufacturers: SmartProjects (in Italy), SparkFun, and Gravitech (both
> in the US). These companies pay a licensing fee in exchange for support for
> these products in the Arduino software and documentation.
>

Hm.. that's quite peculiar, actually. Why do they charge SparkFun et al. a
licensing fee, to offer support? Shouldn't that just be a standard support
contract? Is it a licensing of the Arduino trademark?

BTW: I have always found Arduino a little fishy because Massimo and so on
never really participate in public discourse, so it always seems a little
odd. But I don't know why this is, and all I have is just speculation.

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20100708/094f5182/attachment.html>