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by joshvm
4071 days ago
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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. |
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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.