Arduino Vs. Arduino: Musto Out, Banzi In

Federico Musto, who until two days ago owned the largest part of Arduino AG has been bought out, having today been replaced by a combination of Massimo Banzi and Fabio Violante.

This should bring to a close the saga that began with a fork where two companies called themselves “Arduino” and bizarrely continued for almost a year after the reconciliation of the two was announced. What remains today is one corporation called Arduino AG, now captained by Massimo Banzi as Chairman and CTO, and Fabio Violante as CEO.

Massimo Banzi was one of the original founders of Arduino and one side of the trademark litigation during the period in which there were two companies. With the buyout of Musto, Banzi moves back to the top spot. This change in leadership occurred as a company called BCMI bought all shares of Arduino AG. BCMI was started by four of the original Arduino co-founders; you could say the old gang rides again.

Arduino AG is in essence a hardware company, manufacturing and selling the officially branded Arduino boards. But right now they still maintain the official codebase which most people see as belonging to the community. Despite changes at the top, the proof will still be in the pudding. When will we see the Arduino Foundation come to life and take control of the Arduino IDE? Hackaday will continue to look into it and provide updates.

 

35 thoughts on “Arduino Vs. Arduino: Musto Out, Banzi In

      1. Really.. I didn’t know the cloners were developing an IDE, keeping the board support packages updated, or doing tech support.

        Oh wait.. you’re probably getting all of that from the organization you’re too ‘smart’ to support.

        Free-riding parasites are an inevitable side-effect of Open Source (parasitism: a non-mutual relationship between species, where one species, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other, the host) but FYI: being a parasite isn’t something to celebrate with high-fives and victory laps.

        Just remember when you run into bugs, compatibility issues, or any of the other problems that make hardware hacking a pain: you’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve better.

        1. ever heard of mediaTek, maybe seeedstudio… all people who started in the clone game, now actively contribute to codebase. cloners are essential. if you truly believed in open source you wouldnt have a problem with that now would you? also its not “parasitism” you wank! . DO YOU HONESTLY BELIEVE THAT WIDE SPREAD ADOPTION COULD OCCUR ON ARDUINO BY JUST THE ORIGINAL ORGANIZATION!!! you sir are delusional. a fool easily parted with their money. have fun with your “CERTIFIED” potato, good luck on trying to get them to honor a warranty when you send a bazillion volts up the gnd. fool.

        2. The availability of clones expands the user-base, which in turn stimulates the ecosystem. When the numbers are there, ubiquity ensues. Projects like Arduino rely on this ubiquity to grow.

          No offense friend, but you are on a high horse today :)

          1. 100% true, and this ide is shit and didn’t change for years.
            The real arduino stuff is the huge amount of libraries for talking to nearly every usefull chip
            Who did this ? not the Arduino company.
            Also, look at the ESP8266 “arduino”, what does it clone ?

        3. (parasitism: a non-mutual relationship between species, where one species, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other, the host)
          Well, it isn’t always so simple. Evolution forces parasitic relations into symbiotic ones: Once parasitism turns from optional into a strict dependency, for instance if being a parasite on a certain specific host specie gives parasite ample advantage, it becomes parasite’s interest to assure survival and prosperity of that host specie, so if parasite by chance starts to give the host any benefit somehow, the life becomes better for parasite too.

          If your well being depends on the fact that Arduino exists and that it is standardized platform, your support to it becomes investment into your key assets.

        4. Maybe I don’t support the original creator (although I buyed one real Uno), but they don’t help neither: 20€ one arduino uno board, 35€ for a mega. In China it’s respectively 3€ and 7€ (without any shipping fee). Sorry but for me the gap is too big! I would buy a real board if it was 2 or 3€ more and shipped in less than one week. But I don’t see any reason why I should buy that much for litteraly the exact same thing.

        5. Seeing that the whole “Arduino” design, code, and idea were taken from one of Banzi’s grad students, whom didn’t even receive credit for his work, let alone a dime. And since the IDE really, really sucks for anything other than a trivial, small program. And the reason people like FOSS is that the software will always be available, and the vendor can’t F*(# over it’s customers with inflated prices. But an Arduino Uno costs $25 +shipping, where a clone costs $3 shipped. So, yes, it’s technically open source, but it brings with it none of the properties of an open source project that would make me feel as though they were “giving to the community” and needed my money for support. So, I’m really not going to shed a tear over the idea that ongoing development of the IDE occurs without my donation.

  1. Musto was a douchebag. Glad to see him go. Now its time for Arduino to start innovating and moving forward, before other projects like Micropython eat their lunch.

    1. Exactly. micropython definitely looks like the arduino killer. People who don’t want to mess about with all that curly braces stuff of C++ will pay the little extra to be able to use python, and people who want to stick to C++ etc will just buy the cheaper chinese clones. Its lose-lose for arduino unless they pull something pretty serious out of the hat.

      1. Wrong. People DO WANT and (some) DO NEED to mess up with hardware. High-level languages are all good until you have to trust your life to HALs (hardware abstraction layers), then the game changes.
        Low level languages will never die

        1. I just read out loud your comment with my Trump voice. It was lots of fun!. @moot-rasta and yourself are both correct. Those yearning to do low level stuff will use register-based C or the vendor SDK to do their programming.

          Arduino is NOT low level. It is a higher level of abstraction library written in C/C++. Most of those that use it care little about the LOW level stuff anyways. Many of them would gladly adopt MicroPython if it can do the same things that Arduino does. And MicroPython is getting better daily.

    2. Agreed about Micropython, if you don’t need the cycles or to hit the hardware, which is most of the time, Micropython kills Arduino for speed and ease of development. Notepad++ / GEdit is all you need. :)

    1. Musto is a Liar and will gladly screw over his partners/friends for MONEY. Classical definition of douche-bag-ery. We have way too many Mustos in this world especially at the CEO level. He really should not be the head of anything, let alone the head of an open source hardware related foundation.

    2. Bullshitting is more common than people realize as a means of self promotion.
      I trust someone more that claims no degree that has done verifiable work in a field than someone that claims a prestigious degree with no credentials and no work to show.

  2. A Washing-machine controller turn hacker/maker dream IC, having another tumble.

    On one hand, What is the likelihood of one/both of them folding and people start to stock up on each type of arduino in quantity?

    and on the other hand what is the likelihood of both arduino-co selling themselves to each other in order to trick people into stocking up?

    1. About zero on the “stock up” conspiracy theory, IMO. Lots of companies have “derivative” designs that would adequately replace the hardware (Adafruit, Sparkfun, Seeed – and those are the more politically correct vendors.) At least, at the individual buyer level (I’m not sure how the digikeys, mousers, Microcenters, and other 2nd level distributors were feeling about things. Or the Atmels, Intels, and STs providing “design assistance” on the other side.

  3. I’m glad that the developer responsible for all the original work that resulted in “Ardis on” is keeping his head high. Thank you Hernando Barragán for all your hard work. Wiring.org.co

  4. Try to imagine how little I care. I have NEVER bought a “genuine” arduino, when I can get a clone for a fraction of the cost.
    Or just make my own board with a reasonable pinout.

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