Qualcomm rewrote Arduino's TOS, and the community is not taking it well

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Connecting the dots: When Qualcomm announced its acquisition of Arduino in October, the move was met with lukewarm enthusiasm. Since then, the UK chip designer has implemented significant changes to Arduino's terms of service, prompting concerns within the community that the moves could effectively signal the end of the platform's open-source ethos.

Qualcomm recently acquired Arduino for an undisclosed sum, sparking immediate fears that the "death of Arduino" was imminent. According to New York-based electronics vendor Adafruit Industries (AI), the Qualcomm-owned Arduino has quietly rewritten its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. The new documents are drastically different, with AI criticizing the changes as a shift toward a tightly controlled corporate platform.

Key updates reportedly include a perpetual license on any code or board designs uploaded by users, surveillance-style monitoring of AI features, and a prohibition on research into potential patent infringements. Additionally, Arduino can now retain account usernames indefinitely after account termination, while all user data is integrated into Qualcomm's global data ecosystem.

"Several sections effectively reshape Arduino from an open community platform into a tightly controlled corporate service with deep data extraction built in," Adafruit Industries said.

Even reverse engineering or attempting to study how components work without explicit permission is now reportedly forbidden.

Arduino was founded in Italy as an open-source hardware and software company and attracted millions of developers thanks to its permissive LGPL and GPL license agreements.

Adafruit Industries' post on LinkedIn drew significant attention, with many in the community concluding that Qualcomm has effectively dismantled Arduino's open-source ecosystem. According to Adafruit, both Qualcomm and Arduino's corporate leadership have historically been uneasy with the creations emerging from the FOSS community.

The controversy became so pronounced that the Arduino team issued official statements addressing the new Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. They emphasized that the "pillars" of the platform – open source principles, hardware reverse engineering, ownership of user creations, and minors' data privacy – remain intact.

Arduino stated that the revised documents are intended to improve clarity, ensure regulatory compliance, and support innovation. They are also designed to guide the platform in navigating emerging IT trends, including AI and new commercial opportunities.

"We have been open source long before it was fashionable. We're not going to change now," the Arduino team added.

Permalink to story:

Qualcomm rewrote Arduino's TOS, and the community is not taking it well

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Predictable result. The best course of action is for the community to refuse to purchase or interact with the Arduino team so long as Qualcomm owns them. Qualcomm cannot be trusted, even if they were to back off on these abusive changes they would always be suspect of mishandling that data going forward.

 

[JMGuy]

"We have been open source long before it was fashionable. We're not going to change now.”

Says corporate-owned sellout.

Claiming “we’re not going to change” doesn’t hold up once the company is sold. The moment the acquisition was signed, priorities shifted, and every public statement became filtered through the parent company.

Fine. I honestly don’t mind corporate ownership, but I do mind being told everything is the same while terms, privacy policies, and community expectations are quietly altered in the background. Snake oil is snake oil. If nothing was changing, those moves wouldn’t be necessary.

Don’t lie to my face. Own the fact that things have changed and show me they are for the better instead of insisting they didn’t. That disconnect is exactly why I’m done with Arduino.

 

[ScottSoapbox]

The ever-changable TOS needs to die. It violates basic legal principles on contract law. However, no one is going to get that through our current legal system.

 

[p51d007]

Just make the TOS like this: It's ours, we can do anything we want, change anything we want, keep any user data and do anything we want.

 

[MasterAce]

Is it still GPL?

 

[brunocasarini]

Everything Qualcomm buys turns to sh1t.

 

[Haunting]

Wait, what? The Arduino team posted statement and what Qualcomm has written in the TOS are in direct conflict. Qualcomm says they own everything in the Qualcomm Arduino ecosystem and the Arduino team says everything's fine no changes here FOSS FOSS FOSS! I'm going to take Qualcomm's TOS as the rules of the road and give a tip of my hat to the Arduino team for saying nice but completely legally empty things.

Qualcomm needs to restate their commitment /alignment to FOSS on Arduino or this developer is beating feet to better shores... Hello Raspberry PI my little friend. I wont leave you again....