It's confirmed that the Arduino founders are in a legal dispute over the Arduino name. Arduino V. Arduino | Hackaday
It appears Arduino Srl fka Smart Projects (Arduino hardware manufacturers) are going ahead with sale of what they call "Arduino Zero Pro", while the official Arduino company are not (yet) providing any software support for it in the IDE, unless they have an announcement in the works.
Note that the Smart Projects version of Zero is subtly different to the Arduino Zero on the official Arduino website.
If the Zero is being used a pawn in the struggle between founders, Atmel must be shaking their head in despair. Unfortunately when millions of euros at stake, otherwise reasonable people forget about "gentleman's agreements" and call in the lawyers. I am afraid Arduino is headed for a long legal wrangle, the future of Arduino is at stake.
bobcousins:
This is going to be massively confusing.
As if that isn't confusing enough, the arduino.org Zero Pro is listed for sale on these previously reported sites, but they are using the pictures of the arduino.cc Zero, even showing the same serial numbers!
Equally puzzling, why are Arduino, the famous Open Source Hardware company, still releasing "open" boards with proprietary components?
The firmware for the EDBG chip is closed, even though all it does is provide a COM port and downloader like on other Arduinos. Is it really going to kill Atmel to open source that?
So now we will have to fork the fork to create an Open Source version.
If you dig around arduino.org I think you can find software for the Zero Pro.
It looks like the EDBD chip is just a 32-bit avr - AT32UC3A4128. They aren't very cheap but you could almost uses one like a Dragon. So you could make a Arduino Zero derivative without the EDBD functionality.
The first 4 data bytes in reverse order are 20002C08, which is an address within the 32k RAM of SAM D21 (20000000 to 20007FFF). That sure looks like the initial stack pointer, which ARM puts in the first 4 bytes. The 2 lowest bits are cleared, as required for 32 bit alignment of the stack.
The next 4 bytes in reverse order are 000028B9, which looks like a thumb state program address (notice the LSB is set), also will within SAM D21's flash address space (00000000 to 0003FFFF). On ARM processors, there's 2 instruction modes. Cortex-M chips only support thumb mode, so address words always have their LSB set. If the LSB is clear, it causes a hard fault because the chip doesn't support the other mode.
The next 8 bytes are similar-looking addresses (with LSB set), which would be the ARM NMI and Fault exceptions. Then there's a string of zeros, which correspond nicely to the ARM exceptions that aren't implemented on Cortex-M0+, followed by a lot more groups of 32 bits that look like program addresses for the Systick exception and NVIC interrupt vectors.
I'm pretty sure this data is code meant to run on a Cortex-M0+, not an AVR32.
ARM chips have a standard debugging interface. The AVR32 code therefore can't be THAT difficult. (Although: AVR32 is pretty obscure in general.)
This arduino.org fork thing is not good
And it looks like the downloads (and source code) from arduino.org don't actually support the Zero at the moment.
From the commit log, it looks like some devs who also worked on Yun are actively working on Zero support https://github.com/arduino-org/Arduino/commits/ide-org-1.5.x-zero, but this is not in the arduino.org downloads page yet. Perhaps they think it is sufficiently close to release to start selling boards, but what are the first customers going to use? And when will we get the first support question here?
Smart Projects seem to hold a lot of cards here, they already have manufacturing and distribution channels. I don't know how the sales work between Smart Projects and Arduino SA, but it seems Smart Projects could simply sell boards and keep the proceeds, if they believe they have right to use the Arduino trademark. The board design is open, as is the software, of course.
Arduino SA could set up their own manufacturing, but that would take time. I guess proceeds from hardware sales are significant, without that Arduino SA income is consulting and brand payments for "Arduino inside" etc. If Arduino SA seek an injunction against Smart Projects, then all hardware sales stop, which benefits neither party.
I don't know if Smart Projects are just trying to poison the well and seek a large payoff or other concession, but it seems their intent is to trade as Arduino and create a new Arduino organisation.
The Yun Mini appears to be exclusive to Smart Projects, so they seem to be capable of developing products without Arduino SA.
I guess that forks of Open Source software are quite common and perhaps inevitable, e.g. OpenOffice/LibreOffice. In those cases, there are no direct sales involved, and there is no dispute over the name. Although SCO sued over the ownership of Unix, it always seemed doomed to fail.
The dispute over the Arduino trademark is a simple legal question, but in principle anyone could fork the entire Arduino product line and brand it with their own name. Even if Smart Projects were forced to change their brand name, they can hire programmers, web designers etc to continue independently of Arduino SA.
Not really the point, I didn't say they designed it. They didn't design Arduino Zero either, and nor did Arduino SA for that matter. Hardware and software designers are not that hard to find...
The point is they have contacts and resources to bring new products to market, in the same way Arduino SA do. Smart Projects can survive without Arduino SA, and even seem to be leading.
I notice that the link http://www.robofun.ch/de/arduino-zero-pro.html is selling for only ~$45.
I'm probably going to save some $$$, then take a leap of faith. If this works, I'm happy to get a tangible Zero, instead of the vaporware we see now with the .cc Zero.
Will there be any effort here to expand an IDE, be it 1.0 or 1.6, to the Zero Pro?
EDIT: I notice the Yun mini has 'Made in Taiwan' on it... the zero pro doesn't.