Pictured above, a counterfeit Arduino
I’m a 15-minute walk from Canal Street, NYC, home of counterfeit everything. Men and women from around the world stand shoulder to shoulder shouting “Looyee-Vatton, DVD, Roll-Ex.” Tourists flock to this location looking for a cheap deal on a knockoff purse or watch — some tourists think they’re real, most just want a deal. When you build a brand that represents something of value, eventually you get knocked off. It’s a form of tax for making something sought after.
In my previous article “Soapbox: The {Unspoken} Rules of Open Source Hardware” I mentioned that we as hardware makers in the community do not knock each other off. It’s a fantastic unspoken rule that has allowed us all to improve and add value, not just copy.
Cloning ain’t cool
If your goal is just to make Arduino clones and not add code or hardware improvements, please go do something else instead. I see a few companies just make straight-up clones, make confusing names, and think it’s socially acceptable. It’s not. The beginners get confused as to what’s a real Arduino with the quality, service, and support, and most of the time the clones are crappy. I have a box of “Arduino killers” from all over the world. They’re not adding value in any way — it’s just someone being selfish. I get a dozen emails a week from parents or kids who bought a fake Arduino, and they’re upset it doesn’t work and that the eBay seller or fly-by-night store won’t help them. Most of all, get cloned enough and any reasonable person might just stop doing open software and hardware due to the support burden.
“Clone” in many of the the hardware circles I’m usually in means a knockoff, including the logo, etc. It’s made to fool people; however I think I will say “counterfeit” in addition to clone since there were a couple people on Slashdot that were confused about clone versus counterfeit. This might make it easier to explain exactly what I’m talking about.
So this week I’m going to outline some counterfeits to look out for when you’re looking for a deal on an Arduino or any other types of open source hardware.
Is counterfeit open source hardware a problem?
Not really, sales are only going up for everyone. Innovation is happening more, not less. Counterfeits, are however, being mentioned more and more at events and mailing lists as OSHW has become more high-profile. My prediction is that Arduino will hit 1 million units this year, so with that I think it’s reasonable to expect others to fairly and unfairly try to be part of a huge ecosystem. I’ve also personally seen it in customer support forums on various sites. Customers get what they think is a real Arduino, for example, and it turns out to be junk. The logo is there, the ™ (trademark) is there, but it’s just not a real Arduino. It doesn’t work, and the customer is out $20 or $30. Worst of all, they think learning electronics sucks.
Psychologically, I think it’s hard on makers out there who are worried about releasing their hardware as open source hardware. I’ve heard makers specifically say, “I don’t want to see my product cloned like the Arduino is cloned all the time.” That’s a danger: if we can’t encourage more makers to do OSHW, we’re sunk. But it’s not a problem, yet.
The reputable companies out there that supply most of the open source hardware simply do not do this. You’ll never see good companies just run boards and slap their logo on it, and you’ll not see them just run boards and not work with the maker. We don’t need to, since hardware is basically not-protectable, but we choose to work with each other. It’s not perfect, but it’s working out. So, new makers, here are companies I don’t think you’ll need to worry about: MAKE, SparkFun, Seeed, Freetronics, Adafruit, EMSL, MakerBot, Arduino, Parallax, Wayne and Layne, and the giant list (add yours in the comments) of companies making and selling OSHW. All these companies compete in some ways, but we’re all trying to make the best hardware and out-do each other. The people who work for these companies have pride in their work, and I truly believe they’re all working toward adding value, not just a straight-up copy. And none of them will be violating trademarks or copyrights — we can’t, we all work with each other in some way. We all know that if we step on toes and not raise each other up, this movement will blow apart.
Just to put it in context, RadioShack didn’t need to work with the Arduino team to stock their stores with a board that worked and looked like the Arduino, but they did. There’s more value in working with each other. The Arduino name has value, so RadioShack worked with the Arduino team to stock their stores with real Arduinos. If you’re considering working on open source hardware don’t let any fears of a big company coming in stop you; in fact the big companies are the ones who won’t be cloning/counterfeiting.
Examples of cloning/counterfeiting
The three examples I’m going to use are from Arduino, which covers almost all possible examples, and then I’ll show an Adafruit counterfeit since I help run Adafruit. Right now in open source hardware, Arduino, SparkFun, and Adafruit are getting cloned/counterfeited the most — that’s just my opinion from some data points I’ve collected — feel free to post up your observations. I’m sure there’s a research paper out there in the works. By counterfeit I mean using the trademark/logo, and for cloning I also mean running the boards, not sticking to license, but I’m focusing on the obvious logo/trademark violations.
Pictured above, a counterfeit Arduino
This is a fake Arduino. Usually found on eBay, Amazon sellers, and not your usual electronics shop. At this point I consider eBay one of the worst places to get Arduino-related electronics at this time for beginners — there’s no real punishment for counterfeiting electronics, and Arduino counterfeits are everywhere on eBay. I know the Arduino team is working on getting this stopped, but the biggest victims are the customers who are tricked into thinking they’re buying real Arduinos.
Pictured above, a counterfeit Arduino
After this seller was caught, they just Photoshopped out the Arduino™ logo, but the customer was still sent a fake Arduino.
Pictured above, a counterfeit Arduino
Here’s another: the first one said “Made in Italy” but now it says “Made in China.” It still uses the trademarked name Arduino, so not quite OK. The recent trend I noticed is “Made in Italy” has been removed, quickly. My guess is that the punishment for saying “Made in Italy” is far worse than putting Arduino™ on something.
Pictured above, a counterfeit Arduino
Pictured above, a counterfeit Arduino
Some sellers eventually rebrand their boards and remove Arduino, but they’re using “Uno” which is usually a no-no too, but it’s not a straight-up trademark/logo violation.
I picked these because they’re obviously bad; however, I’ve seen ones that look nearly identical to real Arduinos, and distributors who thought they were getting a “cheap deal from China with overflow” were fooled into buying fake Arduinos.
Ask the reseller where they got them from, ask for photos, front and back of the boards, to see if it’s a crappy knockoff, and if you’re fooled, do a charge-back and tell eBay/Paypal why. In an age where more people care how and where things are made, from organic foods to working conditions in factories, buying a real Arduino matters. If you want to support open source hardware and software, supporting the makers and buying them is the best way to do it.
Pictured above, a counterfeit Adafruit protoshield
A more subtle example, above, this is a counterfeit Adafruit Proto Shield. I’m not talking about just running our boards, removing credits, and following the license (happens a lot to this board) — I’m talking about using the Adafruit logo and name and selling an item as Adafruit (this one was sold on Amazon pretending to be Adafruit).
There are dozens of examples. I tried to pick out ones that would not identify the site, supplier, or pick on a company specifically. Why give them any attention?
What can you do?
If you’re a maker, stay calm and keep making. Don’t worry about knockoffs because, in fact, all the companies that are good work directly with the makers to sell/resell/license.
If you’re a maker, get a trademark. We can’t “protect” hardware besides a patent (and that’s not likely most of the time, too), so you’re best bet is to have a logo, a name, and a copyright. At Adafruit I’ve been able to remove any fake Adafruit stuff off eBay when needed. Arduino does that same — they just have more counterfeits to deal with.
There’s an Open Source Hardware Association that just formed. I’m going to guess that they’ll be helping companies and makers navigate all this. The board has people from top OSHW companies and it’s led by Alicia Gibb, who co-chaired the Open Hardware Summit. So I can say 100% that we’re all in good hands — they’re here to help us.
Buy real open source hardware from the makers. Support a store like MakerShed and pick up a real Arduino or compatible (and other open source hardware products).
Encourage people in your community to get the real deal from their favorite maker making and sharing hardware — it’s worth it.
Look at the giant mess that Google, Apple, Samsung, and everyone else is in when it comes to hardware — it’s war. From the start, the open source hardware community has assumed that we can’t protect our hardware designs. We knew all we had was our smarts and each other. What happens next is up to all of us. Even if you’re not a hardware designer you can help support the makers who have taken the risk, the risk to share their designs with all of us.
Post up in the comments with your thoughts. I’ll be around to answer as many questions as I can, too!
Nevermind the official Arduino pcb layout is pretty crummy…lol
in what ways would you improve the layout to make it not “crummy”? have you made improvements and shared them to help the arduino project with your expertise?
I only have the 2009 CAD file to reference, but sure, I will do some clean up on it and post in a relevant forum, indicating what I changed (not the actual circuit, but the layout) and why.
My biggest peeve is the irregular gap between the top headers- sucks to try to breadboard stuff when 2.54mm just won’t work
But I realize this will cause calamity with existing sheilds if it is changed.. so carry on however you see fit!
A couple more on thought- power and reference LEDs cannot be seen with a shield on… Power and USB jacks are slightly off in length, Micro USB is really needed, and can slim the whole board down a ton (or use Mini USB- both are supported more than USB B).
thomas, have you seen any of other arduinos, upcoming ones and the compatibles out there?
@thomas
Micro connectors, the connectors tend to snap in half on the cable end. They dont have staying power for this use case. Mini-B is sturdy, the cables dont break even under moderate abuse and the footprint is tiny compared to the A that is used.
+1 on the leds not being able to be seen,
I would add a vertical mounted reset switch pointing out the right side if the usb connector is up.
As promised a clean-up revision of the 2009 Arduino reference design. Annotated.
http://www.oldcrows.net/~oldcrow/Arduino/Ard09_crowrev.zip
A few touch-ups left, but mostly improved for better manufacturability. I will go have a look at the 2011 ref design.
that’s awesome, can you email me once you post it up, i’d love to check it out.
hmm- I kinda want to see it too
lol… I need to work on my cad skills anyway.
(that’s just marked up, rather than actually changed, right?)
A lot of similar work was done in the 2007 timeframe as part of the “Freeduino” project (when it looked as if the Arduino team might be abandoning their “open source” policy.) We did 4 designs (0603, 0805, and 1206 SMT, plus a TH version) that more or less duplicated the diecimila design, and then fiddled with manufacturability, buildability, assorted “improved” PCB design guideliens, added a mini-usb, used a TO220 regulator, and abandoned the weird shape. A final version of the TH board was/is sold as a kit by NKC electronics and SeeedStudios.
But this illustrates one of the difficulties with such improvements; without continually chasing the “Official” boards, Freeduino has gotten sorta “obsolete.” There are still nice things about the design, but I don’t think that anyone is really interested in updating it to have Uno-style features…
Solarbotics also did a similar board in the same timeframe (sort-of part of the same overall “project”), optimized for their manufacturing setup and their PCB design experience.
Here’s a nice picture of the NKC board: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickanderson/4610949994/lightbox/
I reworked all the copper. Well, most of it. Ran out of time for the moment leaving the NW corner to tweak. Compare it to a stock 2009 ref design. URL,
http://www.oldcrows.net/~oldcrow/Arduino/Ard09_refdes.zip
(ahh. I see it now.)
I wonder if it would be possible to create a trust network between manufacturers and second- and third-tier distributors? Basically, the upstream suppliers for a product would maintain a list of reputable distributors, and the downstream distributors would link back up to the list. If they don’t match, you’re outside the trust network and you take your risks. Right now, this sort of already exists…through word of mouth and previous experience, there are trusted distributors, where you can be fairly sure all their products are legit. But this would be a way to officially state that a particular product is sourced from a certain supplier, you should be able to follow the chain all the way up to the original source.
yah – i think the open source hardware association could do that, and as you noted we’re also all working together in the community pretty well. a good example is there have been suppliers that wanted to sell things to adafruit and other maker-friendly companies but we said no because they were selling fake arduinos, eventually they stopped, but later just vanished so it didn’t matter in the end.
i’m also pretty sure arduino keeps track of this too in some way and may have an official arduino reselling listing in the works.
the goal is to show the value in contributing to open-source hardware and showing it’s not good to rip everyone off.
AuthenticInvention.com is in. We plan to follow the, now spoken, rules. There is opportunity for everyone willing to put a little thought into designs. The world if filled with unmet needs and niche markets for hardware. Rather than protecting ourselves from what we fear might happen we should participate in building the world we want to live in.
How much of a problem is it, if you’re talking millions of devices sold. How many people are actually giving up electronics due to a bad experience, how much damage is actually occurring.. How many of the devices being sold are actually faulty.
I do find it hard to believe anyone buying stuff from ebay/china that’s cheaper than it is domestically is completely unaware they may be getting an inferior product. People are constantly (and for the most part incorrectly) bitching about subpar Chinese quality.
I honestly don’t believe this is the right way to approach this. DRM/ Copyrights/ Patents/ Trademarks aren’t the solution to copyright infringement, especially give that they’re unenforceable where these problems exist.
It is the customers that are doing it, they want it cheaper.
hi charlie, the customers i’ve talked to think they’re getting a real arduino, they were tricked – and then they get junk and zero support when they try to figure out why something isn’t working.
the resellers who get tricked think they’re getting a great deal on real arduinos and then are stuck when the company vanishes.
who said solving this means using DRM or patents? copyright and trademarks are extremely useful for open-source software and hardware. i think i specifically say patents aren’t really helpful for makers doing oshw.
Exactly…that’s what my suggestion above is about. No need to take heavy handed measures to protect a product, when transparency is almost as good. Basically make the supply and distribution chain as open and well-known as the product itself, then anyone buying from an untrusted distributor knows the risks they take. It could apply to companies that manufacture other people’s open designs, as well…you can see if they’re sending a royalty back to the original designer, and make a choice to support the community.
Patents/Copyright/Trademarks can all be used as a form of DRM/copy(clone) protection, I’m sure you are well aware of this, people have talked about the VID/PID of the newer Arduino’s being used like this too.
But it doesn’t answer the question, how many people are we talking about that are being affected.
Companies who don’t do the research to find out if a supplier is viable, are the ones at fault, there will always be someone selling bricks in shoeboxes.
caveat emptor basically.
VID\PID solution is kind of moot. It would destroy compatibility with older versions of legit arduinos. No matter what for arduino to sustain what makes it good there will always be support for the FTDI version which means slap that on what ever and you circumvent it.
It would work but it would be shooting off their own foot and more then that not the kind of thing you would expect from the pioneers of opensource embedded electronics.
“Patents/Copyright/Trademarks can all be used as a form of DRM/copy(clone) protection,”
You are painting with a very broad brush, here, charlie. The legal distinctions between patent, copyright, and trademark protection are quite clear, meaningful, and useful. It sounds like you’re trying to blur them all together as “DRM,” and I don’t think that’s a tenable position. It’s not hard to argue that both patent and copyright are pretty seriously broken, these days, but I don’t see many people standing up against trademark protection. Who wants to live in a world where any company can legally pretend to be any other company, and anyone can sell a product intended to exactly mimic a competitor’s product right down to the last detail? You go to the grocery store, there’s a whole aisle of Coca-Cola products, and not even the staff can tell you which were actually manufactured by Coca-Cola!
Kind of glad you used counterfeit instead of clone. I even recently used clone to describe HW that is 100% unique design yet 100% compatible with a MFG part. This allows a peer to quickly understand that the code would just “work” so he could learn from it rather then fighting with setup. This is a non arduino board in this case.
You are absolutely right too on the arduino clones. I recently got my first one to aid in porting code and it was hell figuring out which ones where the real ones. In the end good ole radioshack to the rescue. (would have been microcenter but they carry clones , not counterfeits, but clones clearly not arduino and listed as “compatible” which I learned my lesson on things that use that word already hence buying an arduino to port code)
Moral of the story?? There should be a radioshack within 5 mins of your home (in the us) and they carry legit arduinos. Why wait for shipping any ways.
PS the “official 2011″ pic is misleading as it does not reflect the legit ones at radioshack. You should make a clearly labeled section of pics of the real things. And be sure to include the style at radioshack if that pic is a legit model.
I thought the choice of name for the association is a bit unfortunate (since it abbreviates to OSHA, good luck googling that) but I like the sound of ‘oshwa’ as a fix. Oshwa oshwa oshwa… it works for me.
More to the point, an Oshwa BBB type program sounds like a good fix. Oshwa members agree to respect trademarks and copyrights, and here’s a list of them. Also, here’s a logo and a code snippet to put on your site that links back to your Oshwa member profile.
Ideally if Oshwa members would list their distributors through Oshwa, customers could say, “oh, that Open Foo I saw on random-site.com sounds like a great product, I’m gonna hit Oshwa to find a distributor in my country.”
Of course it only helps as Oshwa gets to be well known, but I think the payoff for having a BBB-type independent overseer would be worth the effort. It wouldn’t need to be advertised generally, just blogged by its members, many of whom are so impressively media savvy.
The Open Source Hardware Association _is_ referred to as OSHWA.
Check out oshwa.org (note that right now that site is currently very slow due to the recently announced Open Hardware Summit call for submissions), but that is what it’s called.
Hah…OSHWA. Perhaps they could be abbreviated as OƏ (the letter O plus a schwa/shwa symbol, for the unicode-impaired).
And I just realized that the uppercase schwa symbol sort of looks like an opened padlock. Sorry if this is all obvious and intended, I’m easily amused.
@macegr: I don’t think it was intended, but that is a really cool coincidence.
Oə FTW. I hope that standard propagates.
I’ll grant you that the trademark infringement is a problem. (And clone has never meant counterfeit in the hardware market)
But if you’re complaining that someone is copying your open source designs and producing their own boards (cloning) – that’s stupid. That’s exactly what open source hardware allows.
Don’t do open source hardware if this fact is causing you so much consternation.
Open source drives a faster innovation cycle. If you feel that you are losing out on money due to cloning (your other excuses are lame) – innovate faster.
It seems like you are trying to make up new rules that allow you to be cool, hip and “open source” but ignoring the definitions.
The key point is about trademark; if you buy a product from Xenix, it shouldn’t turn out to be an unsupported copy I knocked out in my garage using whatever SMT caps just happened to fall off my pick & place yesterday. Customers getting those knockoffs thinking they’re legitimate Xenix parts damage the Xenix brand.
“Cloning ain’t cool
If your goal is just to make Arduino clones and not add code or hardware improvements, please go do something else instead. I see a few companies just make straight-up clones, make confusing names, and think it’s socially acceptable. It’s not.”
It’s the “confusing names” part you quoted that’s the kicker. The people I see Paul complaining about are the ones that are intentionally creating confusion as to the provenance of their product. Even in situations where they’re within the letter of the law on trademark infringement, I agree that what they’re doing is “not cool.” Make it clear that your product is UNO-compatible rather than UNO? Totally cool.
Sorry, Phillip not Paul. No idea where that came from. “Sir, please step away from the keyboard…”
hi xenix, i’m glad you agree trademark infringement is a problem. clone has indeed meant counterfeit, i’ve had customers specially say they were “ripped off from an arduino clone” when they also could have said counterfeit since it was sold as a real arduino. however i made it clear that these are counterfeits in the article.
who is complaining that someone is copying open source designs and producing their own boards? just to be clear it’s totally “allowed” to copy open-source software/hardware anything and not add value, however most people do not just do that, they add their own changes and value back in too.
what excuses are “lame” did you actually read the article?
Xenix – good to see we are agreeing
there are social norms in open source software and hardware, maybe you do not like them but they’re there 
for hardware, the open source hardware makers out there generally do not just make a “copy” without adding any value in someway. nothing is stopping anyone from making an identical looking and functioning arduino, but generally the community does not. they do something else, better, cheaper and/or with more features.
making a “copy” of an open source hardware project is more than just running boards. it’s selling them to the community, providing support and if you look at all the folks actually making and release oshw they tend to add improvements in some way, not just make “a copy”.
i think you’re confusing -is- something is technically and legal “ok”? sure! with what is -actually- happening in the community – which is making better/different versions.
I think your being unduly harsh. Though i also left with that taste in my mouth after the “unspoken rules” post I think the creation of OSHWA handled the miscomunication that happened with that post. I think every thing pt said here is perfectly valid and fair. But on the same token I agree this is the point of OSHW so others can do what they want, The thing he is singling out is people making mass boards undercutting the exact same thing sold by the creator AND using the creators namesake to sell it. I think your being unfair .
“The thing he is singling out is people making mass boards undercutting the exact same thing sold by the creator”
It’s nice to buy from the creator. I buy official products, although only in the hope that it will enable further innovation on their part. But – none of this means that clones are not “socially acceptable” in Open Source hardware. Once it’s commoditized (clearly Arduino UNO is approaching this point if it hasn’t passed it already), I’ll buy on price alone. i.e., Diavolino, it’s a functional clone, it has a confusing name (something Italian), it is intended to undercut the creator (be affordable), etc.
“AND using the creators namesake to sell it.”
Yeah – trademark infringement is a problem. “Cloning” Open Source hardware is not.
This piece clearly singles out those using namesakes. You need to read before being so harsh man. The last sentence particularly.
““Cloning” Open Source hardware is not.”?
Harsh?
Ok your slow so im gonna be nice even though you probably dont deserve it. . .
Last sentence of the original post. hip cool etc Not arguing you any more. You either get it that your original post is not about what this post is about or you dont. I tried.
Nice personality. My confusion was from you replying to the wrong thread.
“It seems like you are trying to make up new rules that allow you to be cool, hip and “open source” but ignoring the definitions.”
He either understands what “Open Source” is about or he doesn’t. You can’t have “Open Source, but don’t copy this because it is mine”.
Don’t delude yourself – “Open Source” is a market differentiator now. People claiming to be “Open Source” then complaining about people and companies using the very freedoms that “Open Source” provides, even encourages, is deceptive in my opinion.
hi again Xenix
counterfeit arduinos is what this article is mostly about (and other brands). i think you want to argue about if i think a copy of an open-source hardware project is “bad”. it’s not a “good or bad” thing without any context at all, we’re not robots, we’re people so this is where social norms come in.
it’s what value something can create for a community or a person. if you make an arduino copy that’s identical there can be some value for what you learned, or maybe it’s super-cheap and you can supply a market that arduino can’t, that’s seems valuable to me and i think you’d agree with that too. but that’s not what we’re talking about here at all.
if you just want to take away an arduino sale and undermine an open-source hardware company by tricking people in some way i don’t think that’s good for the community. i don’t mind debating this because i don’t think you’ll come up with any argument that sounds reasonable to anyone who wants to make and release open-source hardware to make the world a better place through sharing their works. i think you’re being a little unfair to me with your comments, but since this is an opinion article, unfair harshness is somewhat expected – just like i expect there to be some people that will counterfeit the stuff i work on at adafruit with limor or just run our boards without adding any value back too. when you put stuff out there, this can happen. it’s not really stopping any of us though
“we’re people so this is where social norms come in.”
There are no social norms in Open Source that say copying is bad. You are proposing this. This is the opposite of Open Source.
“i think you’d agree with that too. but that’s not what we’re talking about here at all.”
Then what do you possibly mean when you say, “If your goal is just to make Arduino clones and not add code or hardware improvements, please go do something else instead”
In my opinion, you made 2 points in your article. One I completely concede – violating trademarks is bad. But the other (whether cloning is ethical or not) you seem to flip flop on.
So, if this is a “debate” – I concede (again) that trademark violations are bad. And you’ve apparently now conceded that “cloning” is perfectly fine. Debate over right?
xenix – that’s right, i think if you’re making a exact copy without adding any value and trying to trick people with confusing names (like calling it an UNO or something) that’s not valuable for open-source hardware or the community. it gets worse when they use the arduino trademark like the examples above.
if you look at the counterfeit examples i have above, many are still shipping boards with the arduino trademark, just photoshop out the logo on the ebay auction. or if they’re caught a lot, they just make boards without the arduino logo and just use UNO.
in the end, the customer(s) are just getting tricked.
hope that’s clears it up.
Yeah pt I agree on the uno thing. I also would have approached Arduino officially and asked permission and or offered them a discount on my parts to incorporate them into legit arduinos I know we are thinking the same thing, fill in the blanks. I was a bit disappointed how that went down myself.
Lower price is not “valuable”? I don’t agree. Better, faster and cheaper are all valuable enhancements in my book.
So, trademark “UNO” or if that is too general – pay more attention to what you name your products.
You keep repeating the trademark issue – we agree on that – no convincing required.
xenix – where did i say lower price isn’t valuable?
“xenix – that’s right, i think if you’re making a exact copy without adding any value…”
hi xenix, i think you’re replying to the wrong comment or something, or not reading the article/comments (you left out the rest of my comment too). just to be more clear, again
here’s a reply i posted to someone asking about the EMSL board: evil mad science has oshw that isn’t using arduino’s trademarked name/logo and they’re only $13 – http://evilmadscience.com/productsmenu/tinykitlist/180 they’re a great company and this is a great example of an arduino-compatible in my opinion. $13 is a great deal and it’s from a great oshw company, hope that clears up what i think about arduino-compatibles that are not exact copies and that are valuable 
“i think you’re replying to the wrong comment or something, or not reading the article/comments”
Weird – I get the same feeling from your responses…
“(you left out the rest of my comment too)”
At least I am quoting something. Yes, I left off the trademark discussion – which is not relevant.
“evil mad science has oshw that isn’t using arduino’s trademarked name/logo and they’re only $13″
I know – I have several of them. And in my opinion – they are totally clones (as is the 11 that you also discussed). Both of which you apparently like, even though “clones aren’t cool”…
Same form factor? Check
Same functionality? Check
Same development environment and drivers? Check
Confusing names? Check (“Eleven” is as bad as “UNO” (assuming that UNO is not a trademark of Arduino – Arduino does not seem to publicly claim it as such)
etc.
I have no idea how this works, but it seems inconsistent. Is there a place you can draw a line between the cool and uncool clones? Or is this just a clique of entrenched manufacturers and resellers that can clone and it be “cool”?
Xenix – good to see we are agreeing
there are social norms in open source software and hardware, maybe you do not like them but they’re there in every community 
for hardware, the open source hardware makers out there generally do not just make a “copy” without adding any value in someway. nothing is stopping anyone from making an identical looking and functioning arduino, but generally the community does not. they do something else, better, cheaper and/or with more features. this is why we have a flourishing ecosystem and great choices, this is my opinion
making a “copy” of an open source hardware project is more than just running boards. it’s selling them to the community, providing support and if you look at all the folks actually making and release oshw they tend to add improvements in some way, not just make “a copy”.
i think you’re confusing -is- something is technically and legally “ok”? sure! with what is -actually- happening in the community – which is making better/different versions. there are HUGE differences between valuable derivatives like the EMSL and freetronics and the non-value adding “clones”.
I’ll agree that it’s not easy to define what is and isn’t OK. You can look at an OSHW design, copy it in nearly every respect, and start building it. As long as you aren’t using anything trademarked or passing yourself off as someone else, you’re within your rights and no one can really tell you to stop. However, it wouldn’t feel quite right within the community. The main reason for OSHW is for people to learn and expand upon the concept. While you can simply copy it, that doesn’t mean you get to feel any love. I’m sure this is the original reason that patents were invented.
Where do you draw the line? I don’t think you can. It’s based on emotion, pretty much. If people like you, you can get away with more. If you pay an original designer a small portion of profits, you can essentially rip their whole design with no hard feelings. If you make useful or interesting changes to a product before releasing your own version, it feels like you’re adding to the community rather than being a parasite. Take the Evil Mad Scientist Lab’s Diavolino, for example. From a purely functional standpoint, it doesn’t add anything…it’s similar to an Arduino or more specifically an Arduino Pro (no USB converter). One could argue it’s the same thing. However, it does have differences that take it outside the realm of a clone…it has an interesting new layout with snazzy black and red coloring; it looks really cool. Secondly…it’s an Arduino-compatible that has gEDA files available, instead of Eagle. It’s a great starting point for people that want to use an alternate, open PCB CAD tool instead of the official Arduino Team’s choice of Eagle. Therefore, I have yet to see anyone complain about the existence of that product, even though it functions exactly like existing ones.
So it’s not easy to just draw lines in the sand and say what is and isn’t OK. It becomes a LOT easier to avoid these missteps if you are actually part of the community and interact with it on a regular basis.
Hey Philip, what do you think of Sparkfun’s “ProMicro” board, shipping with the Leonardo bootloader and instructing users to uncomment the lines in board.txt to use code the Arduino developers feel is not ready?
paul, that’s a great question for the arduino team
Yes, but what do you think, as an advocate for open source hardware philosophy? Does Sparkfun’s behavior (and also Adafruit’s, at least briefly before you guys learned how buggy the Leonardo code is) create a disincentive to publish pre-release open source hardware designs?
Sparkfun’s ProMicro isn’t a “clone” of the Leonardo, since it’s smaller (almost exactly the same form factor as Teensy), but does it really add value? You, Philip, seem to be the most vocal voice regarding open source hardware ethics, so my question for you specifically is if this sort of thing, selling in large volume a board which is based on pre-release, clearly started not-ready-for-general-use the sort of thing a reputable, ethical open source hardware vendor would do?
hi paul, it sounds like you have some opinions about this already
we (adafruit) worked with the arduino team to make a better bootloader, and we hope to see it released soon.
it sounds like you want to know what the arduino team thinks about all this, you’ll need to ask them. did they -publicly- say “don’t make boards”? i don’t know enough about this to have an opinion yet, but please fill in any details you can.
As you probably know, I’m not entirely sold on open source hardware. I believe the model has both strengths and weaknesses. Much like open source, there are many passionate advocates who believe in the strengths and will dismiss any weaknesses. Usually I’m reluctant to even discuss these matters, because these extremely passionate advocates can be quite, well, “difficult”.
I believe it’s still very early in the development of open source hardware to really know the strengths and weaknesses with much certainty. I certainly do not. I’m trying to keep an open mind, yet proceed with caution.
Even intentionally deceptive counterfeit products seem to lack consensus. Sure, everyone seems to agree they shouldn’t be labeled “Arduino” and “Made in Italy”. But reading comments here and elsewhere, I get a strong sense that many people are actually quite happy to buy a check knock-off, at long as it works.
But I think as open source hardware grows, I think we’re going to see many more dubious things like Sparkfun’s ProMicro. I’m sure there are many more examples already, but the ProMicro is one I know about, since it’s intended to compete with the Teensy boards I make, so people ask me about it, and I happen to have a lot of knowledge about the specific technical details.
There are two separate issues I see.
#1: Selling a product with known software problems. Adafruit handled this very well, by stopping shipping the buggy code and actually investing engineering effort to fix the bugs, and working with affected customers to resolve the problems or replace the product. But what is Sparkfun doing? If a big, well known vendor like Sparkfun is unable to resist the profit motive to sell a design before it is of good quality, in the long term what can we expect in the market for open source hardware with less reputable players?
#2: Selling a product of unknown quality, without substantial “in house” testing, where the original author clearly indicated it’s not ready. Even Adafruit went down this path briefly on the 32u4 breakout with the Leonardo bootloader. Sparkfun’s ProMicro page states “bootloader is still in its infancy so expect some glitchiness here and there” (they ought to know by know how buggy it really is). Is this the future of open source hardware, where even well known vendors will grab onto alpha and beta code and manufacture poorly tested products?
I personally have pretty high standards for my own work.
I want to be excited about open source hardware, and indeed it seems to have some tremendous strengths, especially where the products are based on minor revisions to an already well debugged design. But I’m seeing actions, not just from no-name Asian counterfeiters, but from the big-name vendors that don’t give me a warm fuzzy feeling about the future of open source hardware.
I agree with Xenix on this – if you want the benefits of open source, you have to be prepared for the consequences as well. I don’t know what makes the ‘counterfeit’ faulty, but given that the hardware and firmware are all easily available, anyone with baseline electronics knowledge should be able to ‘clone’ the design.
Also, I personally feel that if a ‘team’ or company uses the community to develop their product, they have no right to be the sole vendor of the product. If you’re going to use free labor, don’t expect to ‘own’ the fruits of that labor.
andrew, just to be clear – are you saying it’s ok to use the arduino trademarked name? that’s what this article is about, counterfeit arduinos, open-source hardware being sold using the arduino name (adafruit and sparkfun also are counterfeited a lot, i have one adafruit example there too).
you know that arduino is not the sole vendor of arduinos or arduino-compatibles right? in fact there are official arduinos that are made by other companies too!
I guess it’s also a little confusing that Arduino is both the name of the ‘company/team’ and the open source product. I think that pretending to be a company you’re not is wrong, building and selling an open-source project, even by the project name, is OK.
Of course, this means that low-quality products found on eBay will always be a problem, but I think the buyer is responsible for buying from a reputable seller.
Drew isnt a better way to look at this, if you have the money and want to make more with it then contact the creator and invest in them if you have nothing to add/change. This is really the issue people want to make money, so do it the right way. Something like We will give you the 10k we would have spent making counterfeits you make legit ones and cut us in. Every one wins. No hard feelings. Less work too.
@Andrew: I think you are mistaken. Arduino is not the name of a product, it’s the name of a brand. All the individual boards (the products) have their own names, starting with the NG and up through the current UNO and MEGA2560. Lots of people just ambiguously call them “Arduinos”, but that is technically incorrect. The same way people say “I drive a Ford” — which could mean a Taurus or an F-150.
Phillip, out of curiosity, what sort of faults are popping up with the knockoffs? Compatibility issues? Just plain DOA?
hi greg, DOA, faulty/cheap parts, they’re buying a fake arduino with the arduino logo and TM stamped on it, but the customers are getting something that just doesn’t work at all. the most common issue is DOA, so it’s hard to tell exactly what it is – i’ve seen boards with missing parts to cheap substitutes that just don’t work – with the arduino logo on the boards.
Arduino noob here.
I’ve just bought the books/guides to get started on a couple of projects I’ve had in mind for a while.
My next step is to order/buy the hardware I need to start building my skills and understanding.
Our local electronics store (Jaycar in Australia) sells an item called an “Eleven” which they claim is 100% Arduino Compatible being “based on the ATmega328″ with “improvements and updates for ease of use, cost and getting started.” They have a whole lot of other stuff as well along the same lines under the brand “freetronics”.
My question is: Is this Kosher? Where can I go to check up on this type of stuff because I want to support the project originators but without the time lag of international shipping?
hi mike, freetronics is a well known company and it’s local to you, they create and release open-source hardware, publish their files, use open licenses and are well known in the oshw circles.
Thanks Phillip.
I’ll drop into the store today and pick up some stuff with a clear conscience.
Probably make a $ donation to the project as well.
over on google+ someone said “”hah, see, we told you so…” etc…” they were referring to the counterfeits. my reply is, we have a community and we’ll support each other, so far it’s worked out and i think it will keep working. i also sent this link, it’s a closed-source product that makers really like, but it was counterfeited as well: http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/counterfeit.html
even apple has this problem with fake iphones from time to time. i don’t think people like to hear this, but you can’t 100% “protect” hardware. there isn’t a copyright or trademark (and usually not a patent) that will stop someone from looking at your board and making/re-making it. we need to do more than just the physical bits. there isn’t an uber-license that will protect you either.
i make sure we get our teensy’s from paul at pjrc directly and i think knowing there are counterfeit arduinos out there will help us help the beginners out there as they figure out what they’re going to purchase and support too. there’s a lot of value in supporting each other and encouraging more oshw.
I think it’s lame to put a trademark in the basic design (e.g. in the silkscreen) and then complain when the trademark remains in further iterations. Isn’t that like putting a patented circuit in a product, putting it out there as OSHW, and then coming back at cloners or people who improve on the product as patent infringers? The branding by the company making or supporting the particular instance should be done separately from the design, perhaps by a sticker applied to the board. Then, people could do whatever with the basic design, and counterfeiters trying to decieve would easily be identified as separate from those merely producing the exact same design (with quality and prices that could be better than that of the original designer).
jmalasek, that’s not a good argument. the counterfeiters are remaking the arduino(tm) logo and doing a crappy job at it too. they’re purposely adding it to a board to trick people.
you’re saying we should not be allowed to put our own logo on our boards and only use stickers instead? you realize then the counterfeiters would just make counterfeit stickers right? in fact many did (and still do) that say “made in italy”.
you’re from pololu right? that’s pretty cool, because you’re a well known hardware company that makes great stuff — i have a few questions
has pololu ever been counterfeited? doesn’t pololu put the name/logo on boards? are there plans for pololu to release oshw without logos on the boards? what oshw products does pololu plan to release… if no plans for any oshw, why not? and lastly, why does pololu buy arduinos and not just make your own?
Yeah, I’m from Pololu. I think you’re avoiding my basic point, but maybe I just didn’t make the argument well. You have talked about the brand and design as separate things: design, do what you want with it (though some things are cooler); brand, don’t pretend to be us. I think that’s probably reasonable, but then don’t put the brand in the design. I get it that those who want to deceive still can. But how does someone who wants to contribute by improving the manufacturing process but not touch the design communicate something like, “This is exactly the latest Arduino Uno design, just made by Pololu”?
I’m not sure what Pololu will do as far as making our designs open. We have had some of our stuff cloned in the traditional sense: people have copied our designs from scratch, without our files. We put a decent amount of effort into securing our bootloaders (I’m not challenging anyone here!). I do share some of the sense other commenters have expressed about OSHW companies or proponents wanting it both ways in terms of openness and control. By the way, I want it both ways – I want everything out there to be totally open, and I want control of everything I create. My earlier patent analogy is also kind of in play here: I think one thing I would want to do if we cloned an Arduino is to add our soft power switch to it; for now, I have not looked into the ramifications of openly adding a patented element to an open source design. We don’t make Arduinos because I’m not that excited about making exact copies of something that is easy to buy. If we were to do some clone, there are a lot of little things we’d want to change, and we would then want to advertise those differences (“improvements”).
More broadly and to nitpick at the same time: I do not think intellectual property is a morally valid concept, and I am all about freedom. I did not and would not say, “[you] should not be *allowed* to put [your] own logo on [your] boards”; I’m just pointing out what I think is inconsistent in your statements. And since you seem to be into constructive suggestions and solutions instead of just complaints and skepticism, the branding could be done through a separate layout layer (in the case of a PCB) that still gets merged with a functional traditional silkscreen layer to produce the final silkscreen. People after the design but not the brand could then just modify or not use the brand layer. I haven’t looked into it, so maybe this is already standard practice (but I doubt it).
Jan Malasek (pololu) thanks for stopping in!
you wrote “I’m not sure what Pololu will do as far as making our designs open. We have had some of our stuff cloned in the traditional sense: people have copied our designs from scratch, without our files. We put a decent amount of effort into securing our bootloaders”.
ok, so you see value in your designs and you’re protecting them with what i think people would call DRM.
and then your write “More broadly and to nitpick at the same time: I do not think intellectual property is a morally valid concept, and I am all about freedom.”
how can you say that and then also say you’re not doing open designs and you’re securing your bootloaders if you’re also saying you do not think intellectual property is a morally valid concept?