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Living long enough to be seen as the villain. As you point out, Arduino did a lot of original work in integrating the toolchain that made it really simple to make something. They then stagnated and competing products shot past them (and that artist market).

The team was a group of academics who weren’t necessarily ready to build a business, but instead of letting it go when the market, they’ve made some desperate decisions. The industrial/commercial markets that a lot of people here use microcontroller boards for are well catered by much cheaper boards, and Arduino should’ve stuck to developing their original creative market with better tools.



> The team was a group of academics who weren’t necessarily ready to build a business, but instead of letting it go when the market, they’ve made some desperate decisions. The industrial/commercial markets that a lot of people here use microcontroller boards for are well catered by much cheaper boards, and Arduino should’ve stuck to developing their original creative market with better tools.

and do what? That market isn't used to pay for the tools (hell, they made "good enough" one that's free), and their boards are too pricy even for some one-offs


Pivot to actually being an open-source-supporting nonprofit?

You know, the thing they were saying that they were?


Right but earning money how ? nonprofit still needs to pay the bills.


From donations like a normal nonprofit. They probably won't be able to pay the 7-figure salaries they were used to from the grift they had before, though.


Which other non-profit makes hardware ? rPi foundation also lives off profits. OLPC also lived off selling their stuff..


Implied in my first line: die heroes. It’s okay for things to end because they aren’t viable any longer.

But there are of course plenty of examples of open source projects which sustain themselves with sponsors, etc.




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