westfw:
I suspect that the current Arduino team is having difficulties lining up manufacturers for the full suite of boards. When Musto was running the manufacturing, he may have been willing to run off small-quantities of the less popular boards "as needed" using spare plant capacity, but it would be harder to get manufacturers who are less "intimately involved" to agree to such ... irregularity. Back before the "re-unification", it almost looked like the .org contingent was purposely "flooding" the market with new designs that would need to be manufactured "irregularly."If they haven't, do you think (as a customer/user) it would be better to discontinue those boards (or "product directions") or to struggle to re-create them?
When Arduino.cc took back Arduino.org didn't they also get the manufacturing facility? If so, we don't need contract manufacturers, we just need some reasonable management. Or did Musto destroy the tooling??