Could somebody shed some light on this? The only thing I took away from the poor translation is that one of the four original founders changed the name of his own manufacturing company from Smart Projects SRL to Arduino SRL. The article states "The central point of contention is where the future official Arduino boards are made" However, why would this be an issue with a project that has always waved the open hardware flag? Everybody from Sparkfun, Adafruit to Spark.io have based their own boards on arduino's architecture so why is this all of a sudden become an issue? Io non ho capito

The way I understand it, Smart Projects, who is a hardware manufacturer that currently exclusively manufactures the official Arduino boards, is trying to take over the brand in fear that the actual Arduino management is going to drop the exclusivity and allow other manufacturers to make offical boards. They've renamed Smart Projects to Arduino SRL and made an arduino.org to compete with arduino.cc. The real Arduino, which is a US-registered LLC is claiming, seemingly with good reason, that this is a trademark violation and dilution of their brand. That's what this is about. While they've never had a problem with compatible and even direct copies of the DESIGNS they've always strongly defended the right to CALL their products Arduino. This is now under threat as their exclusive manufacturing partner is trying to cut them out.

Hmm, not sure how to feel about this. I've always liked that Arduino was made in Italy and so it feels like a more ethical purchase than most electronics.

That makes a lot more sense!

This HaD article is a bit more coherent and references the linked German article.

http://hackaday.com/2015/02/25/arduino-v-arduino/

(based on the German version of the article)

The LLC mostly cares about the idea and the software and is thinking about allowing other manufacturers to use the Arduino name (All the third-party boards right now legally only can say "Arduino-compatible" and can't use the logo). The SRL manufactures all the official boards right now and of course doesn't like cheaper official alternatives and is more oriented towards industry cooperations and getting an IPO. With the renaming and a new website (arduino.org, against the original arduino.cc run by the LLC) they are trying to get a stronger association between the name "Arduino" and themselves.

They're running on mindshare momentum these days. I don't think the Arduino platform has really improved at all in the last 3 years.

mBed is far superior at this point in almost every way.

I do agree that Arduino hasn't really kept up with the competition. There are tons of alternatives doing interesting things - Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone, Tessel, spark.io, Teensy, mBed. My personal favorite has to be Teensy product line. Hard to beat an ARM Cortex-MO+ for $11 http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/teensyLC.html

The $13 TI Tiva Series C LaunchPad model EK-TM4C123GXL is worth a look if you are looking at the Teensy.

Spark's Photon seems like a much better deal at only $19

But it's more than mindshare, Arduino is being adopted by lots of boards as a hardware and software standard.

mBed is being driven by a chipmaker (ARM). Arduino is not. If they drop the Atmel chip and find another, they'll break off with the older devices.

Ah the divisive influence of money to be made. And who gets to make it. I was expecting something like this to happen eventually as Arduino and IoT were becoming pretty intertwined and every hyping IoT as the next big thing. There is money to be made in the brand. I lot of money if played well, not a lot if the brand is destroyed. And it has always seemed to me that the Arduino founders were leaving a lot of that money "on the table" as folks like to say. That is not a long term stable situation, eventually someone is going to go in and try to take the money.

That said, I hope they don't screw it up. There have been folks who did and allowed folks who were prepared to jump into a fragmented market to come in and take it over.