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Just to clarify, I am not part of the official development team. IN fact I have only met one of them in person, David C a coupole of years ago.

I got involved because I used the Arduino for teaching in so many of my classes that I figured I should give something back. Then I got addicted to both the idea and the wonderful community that open-source hardware represents, and have tried to support the project wherever possible since then.

I do agree with you that the team model used by Arduino is overly controlled, and not so open to outside contributions to the “official” releases, mostly on the hardware side. that is what this whole discussion addresses.

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I personally am fine with calling any complete boards I make Arduino Compatible, just so long as I can call my shield Arduino shield and Arduino projects. In a similar format to Firefox or Ubuntu.

I would just like to encourage people to read the Arduino forum threads linked above, we have been having a somewhat healthy debate about all this! It’s good to see that the whole Arduino trademark issue is coming to the forefront for public discussion, especially since the closed ( i.e. not open-source) nature of the Arduino PCB files and the trademark (Arduino name) protection were not mentioned or explained by the team until only a month or so ago, while the project started about two years ago.

That said, there are a lot of interesting developments around these issues, so check out the threads linked at the top of the article.

Most open-source projects maintain control of their name and identity: Linux, Debian, Ubuntu, Firefox, etc. are all trademarks and their use is regulated. This is done for many reasons, but I think the main one is to make it clear what is actually part of the project. If we didn’t put any restrictions on the name Arduino, people could use it to refer to closed, proprietary products, to products that don’t work with the Arduino software (or that appear to work with it, but in ways that are subtly incompatible with the official hardware), or simply to things that people won’t be able to find information about on the Arduino website. All of which we think are detrimental to the Arduino community.

Paul Badger’s excellent Bare-Bones Board is evidence that you don’t need the name “Arduino” to create a successful Arduino-compatible product. In fact, he’s probably better off without it, since he’s now created an independent brand that people will recognize and respect as his work. We want to encourage people to make their own hardware (and are taking steps to make it even easier to do so), we just want to be clear what’s what. In that sense, I think we’re only following in the philosophy established by the larger open-source community and which seems to have served them well.

I expect this effort on their part will cause some ill will but I don’t think they are trying to do any harm. I know some of the Arduino compatible board makers. They are not “up in arms” over this. It is just a small bump in the road for the popular Arduino platform.

How can something be “open” and freely usable if you must comply with various restrictions on the names which only serve to obfuscate the various options and confuse the users?