Arduino Terms of Service and Privacy Policy update: setting the record straight
26 comments
·November 21, 202512_throw_away
RobotToaster
> We are open.
Except that half their boards and the entire cloud platform aren't open source at all.
PaulHoule
Sorry, you got bought by Qualcomm and that was suicide.
kvakvs
I don't get it, do we keep the pitchforks out, or do we stash the pitchforks?
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beefnugs
"we collect data for your privacy" they have no idea what words or actions mean anymore.
There is no such thing as being purchased by a large company while retaining anything non-evil. If anything this is the remaining employees who were lied to their face about remaining whatever they were
healsdata
Adafruit acted a bit shady here. Their original post includes:
"Military weird things"
Reading the ToS, the two mentions of military are "don't use our AI product for military use" and in the export and trade controls section.
How are either of those weird?
monegator
>Adafruit acted a bit shady here
what is new here?
rockskon
Given the ambiguity of the phrase "military use" when the military does, in-fact, use it for things the military does - I am not confident in the slightest with Arduino's use of language here.
healsdata
How would you want to see this further clarified?
> Military Use: Use by or for any military organization or for any military purpose, including but not limited to projects sponsored or paid for by military organizations, or use by the U.S. Department of Defense (except for DARPA), U.S. Armed Forces, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. intelligence agencies, or any foreign counterparts of the foregoing.
rockskon
Gee, I dunno, how about by not limiting its scope exclusively to AI usage by the military?
Also - given how many tech companies involved in AI have done an about-face on military usage of it, I'm increasingly seeing it as an empty promise.
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snvzz
Free Software's Freedom #0: Freedom of use.
riazrizvi
This allays my suspicions. I appreciate the response to this community’s concerns.
arjie
Seems reasonable. I have a Duemilanove and an Uno R2 that I haven't used in ages but Arduino stuff has always been open as far as I remember. I really can't bring myself to pull out the pitchforks here. They've earned the trust from me. It's been over a decade now.
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villgax
Faceless corpo speak at best
neilv
They say "privacy" a lot on that blog page, but that very page runs surveillance capitalism trackers from Facebook, Twitter, Google, and others.
baobun
Whoa there, you're in reverse-engineering territory of their website already!
rasz
They mean privacy for the author of that blog post - he is anonymous after all.
exasperaited
“ we have been open-source long before it was fashionable.”
That is a weird, weird claim for a firm that was founded off the back of a project that started in 2005.
It’s, what, over five years after the VA Linux IPO, two years after Microsoft arguably used Caldera as a weapon in a proxy war against IBM, seven years after one of the most famous software products of all time, Netscape Navigator, went open source.
Just a strange, facially implausible bit of appeal to tradition.
typpilol
If the only restriction on reverse engineering is their cloud SaaS, why was everyone up in arms?
Or is this Arduino trying to save face?
healsdata
Their definition of "the platform" in the TOS is verbose and has weird grammar. I can see how people came away with a different understanding.
> User shall not translate, decompile or reverse-engineer the Platform, or engage in any other activity designed to identify the algorithms and logic of the Platform’s operation, unless expressly allowed by Arduino or by applicable license agreements;
> The Site is part of the platform developed and managed by Arduino, which allows users to take part in the discussions on the Arduino forum, the Arduino blog, the Arduino User Group, the Arduino Discord channel, and the Arduino Project Hub, and to access the Arduino main website, subsites, Arduino Cloud, Arduino Courses, Arduino Certifications, Arduino Docs, the Arduino EDU kit sites to release works within the Contributor License Agreement program, and to further develop the Arduino open source ecosystem (collectively, the “Platform”).
baobun
I can only read this as the entirety of "Arduino open source ecosystem" being part of "the Platform".
unmole
> why was everyone up in arms?
Engagement farming, clout chasing etc.
"We are Arduino. We are open. We’re not going anywhere."
-- statement from Qualcomm without a single human being's name on it