Arduino Pro hardware is not open-source hardware « Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers!

We get asked if all Arduino hardware was or is open-source hardware since Arduino has been historically been open-source, and “open-source” is part of the “About Arduino” page and mission. If there is a change in direction and/or if closed source hardware is shipping now from Arduino, what does that mean for makers, engineers, and the open-source contributors to Arduino?

The Arduino Pro Hardware (Portenta H7) is not open-source hardware. We asked Arduino about it as the page for the Arduino product(s) says OSH and open-source, but there were no downloadable board files. Arduino has previously published and publishes board files for their open source hardware. This is a departure from the Arduino statement and what we all know them for “All Arduino boards are completely open-source, empowering users to build them independently and eventually adapt them to their particular needs.”

“Arduino Pro is a line of products for industrial control, robotics and other professional applications which is described in a separate website at https://www.arduino.cc/pro/ . They are sophisticated boards which are designed and manufactured to work in critical environments, like the Portenta H7, and they require a lot of technology in the manufacturing process. At least for an initial period, we want to prevent counterfeiters from blindly downloading a file and manufacturing it without any R&D effort or contribution to the community, because the result of that will be tens or hundreds of low-quality clones which do not have nearly the quality of ours, and no benefit for the community. This would confuse users and prevent these products from being successful, because their value is not just in their circuit design but also in their quality. These are not boards that one could manufacture at home or in a makerspace.

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