Open letter - thoughts on the Arduino vs. Arduino battle

Dear Arduino LLC and Arduino SRL (alphabetical order, no preference intended or to be inferred)

As I understand it, and please correct me if I am wrong,

• Arduino started about 10 years ago.
• About 7 years ago, the company comprised two parts 
• Manufacturing (in Europe)
• Developement (in the US)
• The original founders are not shareholders of either part

Fast forward to now, and we find that both Arduino LLC in the US and Arduino SRL in Europe are fighting to decide who is the "real" Arduino.
 
The first thoughts I have had on this are as follows;

• Arduino is an open source project that consists of 3 elements, not just manufacturer and developer, the third element, with equal importance is the community. Both Manufacture and Developement have been influenced by the community.
• All 3 elements of Arduino are under threat from "clones" largely made in the far east, and inferior to the real thing.

 So what is to be done? As ever, the courts will decide, if it gets that far ( I hope it doesn't come to that). I would like to put forward a possible solution.

Firstly, Arduino LLC and Arduino SRL, please talk, and think this through. Consider the cost of this litigation, in both financial and reputation terms.
You could acknowledge that both arguments have merits, and settle this amicably. Whilst you fight each other the wolves are circling. Arduino faces challenges competing against Arduino copies, as well as Raspberry Pi, Beagle bone and many others.
At the moment, Arduino has the edge in Market share, and reputation. Arduino is the first option (in many cases, the only option) we as the end user consider when looking to build a project.
I beg of you, don't loose that because of in-fighting. It matters not one jot who "wins" if there is no market share left.
Possible solutions?

• Manufacture and Distribution

• Is it possible that Arduino LLC could have all rights to manufacture and distribute in the US, and Arduino SRL all rights in Europe? I estimate they are similar size. 

• Future Development

• I suggest a new "Not for profit" foundation be formed to continue development, and that this be a foundation without national boundary.
•  Both Arduino LLC and Arduino SRL could fund the foundation on a sales percentage basis, and it would attract independent funding from the Arduino community.
• Without boundaries would reinforce the open source ethos, and attract the best people to the project. 

I respectfully ask you all at both LLC and SRL, to please stop and think, just for a moment, and consider all that you have achieved, all that you can achieve, and how valued you are by the wider community.

To the Arduino community, I ask for you to add your comments to this open letter, forward it, repost it retweet it. Do whatever it takes to let everyone involved know how we feel and how much this could hurt us.

I end with a quote "Live Long, and Prosper"

Andrew Mallinson

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Genuine Arduino New Colours comparison with Fakes

Arduino in New Colours? Why?
Arduino is open-source, the design specs are available from many sources. This means you can build your own! It also means that it is frequently copied commercially, and not always with great success. Arduino released the plans, but not the trademarks and logos, copies using these trademarks are infringing copyright, they are undermining the spirit of open-source, and just plain wrong.
Over the last few years, the market has been flooded with forgeries, sorry to say, but the chinese seem to be the main culprits.

There is some good news though!

Arduino is changing!

The main difference you will see is the colour, but there are other differences.
Shown here, side by side, you can check out the differences to look for

The new colour of the genuine board makes identification really easy, here are the other areas to check

• The input resistor

• The genuine Uno has a Gold and Black resistor
• The Fake is Silver and green

•  The Header Sockets

 

• The Genuine Uno has the names printed on the headers in White
• The Fake has no printing

• The Logo

• The genuine Logo has a unique Font and Design
• The fake is less defined, badly drawn and obviously wrong when compared

• Performance

 The main difference is not visible. Genuine Arduino works, and it works well. Sure, you are going to screw up the code, get the pins connected wrong and all the other ways you will "have fun".

We got hold of a couple of forgeries, and subjected them to some of our code.
It kind of worked okish.
To clarify, it worked fine with basic code, but failed after about 30 hours of use.
Trying a second fake, we found that not all the Arduino add-ons were recognised.
It is kind of frustrating to debug code anyway, but if you cannot be sure of your hardware it just becomes a nightmare.

At the end of the day, do you want to work your way through the issues to get that project right, just to have it consigned to the bin because you saved a few quid?

I hope this quick guide is useful for you, have fun, and please check out our website
www.mallinson-electrical.com/arduino/arduino-uno-rev-3.html