About that trademark issue...If you can't enforce the trademark better give up on it anyway?Sounds like a strange idea to me. Even if legal steps are not affordable, I would never give away the chance to
at least point a finger at "EvilArduino" on the net, in the press. whatever...
What do I expect as a consumer from the "Arduino" trademark?I bought 3 of them until now, they all worked fine. I don't have any need for any more of the boards right now, but
when I need a few more of them I expect them to be of the same quality next year.
Ok, now it's next year... I order 10 boards from
my local distributor (not PCB-Europe) but he switched to "ElCheapoArduino" in the meantime. Bad news is they do not work as expected. I complain with my distributor but he says :
"you clicked on : buy arduino now, and we delivered arduino! Well, it's not trademarked it
is an arduino"
I would argue: If I order an arduino somewhere, I want that same good quality board I have now.
Imagine I release a new Beatles CD and put some fake pictures of John,Paul,George and Ringo (I know there are only two of them left) on the cover. But when you start up the player your only hear me strumming away on the guitar and singing along with a voice that makes my dog change into another room!
I guess you would prefer that I had to call my CD "Eberhard Fahle sings his favourite Beatles tunes". Then you would hear this strange Free Jazz version of "Let it be Arduino" on the college radio and think : Not bad, actually even better than the original, I'll buy it.
Name on derative workI went through this when I released my first open source software. I was tempted to use a license that actally forbids to mention the original source or promote the deriative work with my name. I skipped that since I wanted a licence that was really easy to understand and since nobody knows me. There are no credits to be lost for Eberhard Fahle.
But the concern is still there: somebody probably puts out a bad piece of software and it has your name on it. Still make me feel unconfortable.
For the Arduino there is a lot of credibility to loose. If I had to decide for this project I would vote for putting the non-advertising clause into effect.
OTThe thread has reached page 4, probably someone should mention again that ..
1. Open source hardware is a fairly new topic. Try searching the net, read the wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_hardware -> "Look ma, it's that Arduino again!"
There are no standards here, The Arduino Team might be setting one....
2. We all love the arduino and appreciate the work being done
3. Find it very pleasing that
mellis is still with the discussion!
4. Don't expect a quick answer to the whole thing, don't we?
Eberhard