[bottled_poe]

It seems to clash with the philosophy of Arduino.

"What is Arduino? ... It's an open-source physical computing platform" [1]

They even list this as a selling point:

"Open source and extensible software"

Is this MS operating system going to be open source?

1 - http://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Introduction

[gothenburg]

It's not meant to replace the open source perspective of Arduino, it's meant to complement it.

It's a good thing, not a bad one.

[0x006A]

From all we know its the classical Microsoft strategy: Embrace, extend, and extinguish. Remind me, why is this different this time?

[castell]

Everyone should read Bill Gates' infamous memo Windows: The Next Killer Application on the Internet (January 1994):

http://www.microsoft.com/about/companyinformation/timeline/t...

Some notes: The Marvel product turned out to be The Microsoft Network (short MSN v1, not to be confused with later iterations of MSN web services): http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2306,00.h... . The Cairo operating system (aka Win96) was never released: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_system)

[joshvm]

Rather difficult to extinguish an open source project that in no way depends on Microsoft.

The most annoying thing they could do is unsign the drivers somehow (difficult, since programming is done over a generic FTDI chip or directly in the case of the Mega32U4) and force people to develop using a different platform.

I suppose if everyone hopped on the Windows bandwagon and then Microsoft pulled their project, it would be an issue. For instance if suddenly you no longer had access to the services, but that's not really a killer.

You can buy Arduino clones from China - I've never paid the 'official' Arduino or Sparkfun mark up. You can make your own minimalistic board since the bootloader is freely available. You could even go barebones and learn to code for AVR chips without Arduino getting in the way (it's cheaper and leaner).

Worst case everyone runs to OS X and Linux.

[fnordfnordfnord]

>Rather difficult to extinguish an open source project that in no way depends on Microsoft.

ahem, There was a court case about this sort of thing, U.S. v. Microsoft. Java wasn't open source, yet but I still think it is relevant to your first comment. The issue is not what MS can do to Arduino, but what MS can do that causes trouble for people on other OS platforms.

I'm not proposing that this is an MS strategy, but that sort of thing is not unprecedented in MS' past, so it's not unreasonable that some might be skeptical of MS' intentions. In reality, the open source hardware hobbyist movement is so small that it defies good sense to think it could be a critical part of a MS dirty tricks campaign. OTOH, maybe MS is really bullish for the IoT.

>You can buy Arduino clones from China - I've never paid the 'official' Arduino or Sparkfun mark up.

Good for you!

> You can make your own minimalistic board since the bootloader is freely available.

You're right in that the bootloader is a big part of the magic here. A freely available bootloader, and a barely-passable IDE (that runs on any platform) are the two things that set Arduino apart from all of the other similarly capable kits that came before it. If you appreciate the bootloader, you might consider paying the "'official' Arduino markup" at least once.

>You could even go barebones and learn to code for AVR chips without Arduino getting in the way (it's cheaper and leaner).

You could, but it's not cheaper, since you'll need an AVRISP, or something similar, you'll also need to spend a lot of time learning about microprocessor minutiae before you ever get to anything interesting.

No, worst case is more like Arduino focuses on MSVS interoperability and sort of abandons the cross-platform IDE; but it wouldn't make much difference now anyway. I hope it turns out well and ends up introducing more people to open source hardware; and I doubt it will cause anyone to adopt Windows over Linux or OSX.

[joshvm]

In this case I think the benefits far outweigh the risks.

Now it _sounds_ like you're being snarky because I'm not directly supporting Arduino.cc, but my point was that the beauty of open source is that somebody else can produce things a lot more efficiently/cheaply than you can and there isn't one controlling entity. I do own an 'official' Arduino Leonardo, but when you can buy more from eBay for $3, it's hard to justify paying 6 times the price, plus shipping, from Sparkfun.

It is certainly cheaper in some cases: the Pro Micros run Mega32U4's which have built-in USB controllers; all you need is a micro-USB cable. I prefer to code for AVR directly for a number of reasons, and Arduino boards make excellent dev platforms once you replace the bootloader with LUFA or something similar. Otherwise a tinyISP is a few dollars from eBay (they're hardly clones, since there are no official suppliers anyway). You get the option of using Atmel Studio although it's Windows-only anyway.

I'm really not a fan of the Arduino IDE either, so if Microsoft wants to bring in Visual Studio support they're more than welcome!

[fnordfnordfnord]

>In this case I think the benefits far outweigh the risks.

I'm starting to suspect that you may not be in the primary target audience for Arduino.

>Now it _sounds_ like you're being snarky because I'm not directly supporting Arduino.cc

Yeah, kinda. I don't know you so I'm not really meaning to be too judgmental. I also purchase a few clones here and there, and I encourage others to do so as well.

>It is certainly cheaper in some cases: ...

Those are some good points, but I'll note that they (built-in USB, $3 ICSP doohickeys, etc.) are relatively recent developments; and sometimes beyond the capabilities of a lot of the Arduino's primary audience.

[castell]

> extinguish an open source project

Open source? Windows IoT requires Visual Studio and Windows (Windows Remote Arduino is a WinRT (WinRunTime) component). http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software

[joshvm]

I interpreted the extinguishing part as getting rid of Arduino in general, not whether Microsoft pulls support for their IoT platform.

[69_years_and]

Yes it's a good thing (for the tinkerers of this world) and I suspect its a long term view for MS. If young tinkerers can tinker away on some of the cool hardware out there leveraging MS products/tools for free (in the same way they can using linux tools) then in the future maybe some of those young folk will bring to this world some awesome startups also using the MS tool chains, a chain they may well be prepared to exchange cash for - but certinally a chain they will be familiar with.

Of course those not happy with that can fork the Arduino and its tool's - as far as I know they are all open.

Of course it may lead nowhere MS and they may well drop it when the return does not pan out.

My 2 cents...

[mauricemir]

Yes given the relatively small amount of space on ardunio using VS to write code for them seems over kill.

[fnordfnordfnord]

Integrating the Arduino firmware with a Windows GUI app will be a lot easier if the firmware was generated from within MSVS. I could imagine automatically generated bindings to hardware functions. I can also imagine an automatic custom "device driver" generator; and then maybe an all-in-one installer roller thing. There are some pretty cool possibilities.

[hueving]

How is that good?

[d_luaz]

How is it bad?

[bottled_poe]

That is not a good counter-argument. Anyone can do something that is not worthwhile.

[d_luaz]

The author did mentioned "it's meant to complement it", I assume that is good: use if if you like it, ignore it if you don't.

I guess the opinion of "not worthwhile" doesn't constitute good or bad either for the Ardruino community.

[spiritplumber]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

[d_luaz]

Assuming M$ is always evil is still a personal opinion, doesn't mean it's bad. Replace M$ with Google, Apple, Amazon or any other company doing the same thing, does it actually bring out any meaningful conclusion?

I assume better Ardruino support on Windows is a good thing.

[spiritplumber]

Going from past data, though....

Arduino on Windows so far works pretty well as-is.