By ByteBot
One month after Qualcomm announced its Arduino acquisition on October 7, the beloved open-source hardware platform updated its Terms of Service to prohibit reverse engineering. The November changes directly contradict the openly hackable DNA that built Arduino’s 33 million-user community over two decades. Adafruit founder Limor Fried captured the community’s bewilderment perfectly: “Why is reverse-engineering prohibited at all for a company built on openly hackable systems?”
Five TOS Changes That Broke Community Trust
Arduino’s November update introduced restrictions that fundamentally contradict its open-source heritage. Specifically, the reverse-engineering ban states users cannot “translate, decompile or reverse-engineer the Platform” – a direct attack on the hacker ethos Arduino championed since 2005.
However, that’s not all. Moreover, the new Terms claim perpetual rights to all user-uploaded code and board designs, implement opt-out-only AI surveillance, prohibit investigating Arduino’s potential patent violations, and integrate all user data into Qualcomm’s global ecosystem. Consequently, each change moves Arduino from community-driven to corporate-controlled.
Indeed, the tech press didn’t mince words. The Register headlined “Makers slam Qualcomm for tightening the clamps on Arduino,” while IT’s FOSS asked bluntly: “Enshittification of Arduino Begins? Qualcomm Starts Clamping Down.”
Arduino’s Clarification Dodges the Core Question
Subsequently, Arduino responded on November 21 with damage control, claiming restrictions “only apply to Software-as-a-Service cloud applications” and “anything that was open, stays open.” Hardware schematics, the Arduino IDE, and open-source tools supposedly remain untouched.
Nevertheless, the maker community isn’t convinced. Furthermore, Adafruit sent detailed questions to Arduino and received silence. Fried and managing editor Phillip Torrone noted that “Arduino’s blog leaves many questions unanswered.”
Even if Arduino’s clarification is accurate, it sidesteps the fundamental issue. Why introduce ANY reverse-engineering prohibition for a platform whose entire value proposition is “build your own from scratch?” Additionally, why integrate user data into Qualcomm’s ecosystem? Why did these changes appear exactly one month after the acquisition announcement?
Ultimately, the timing alone destroys credibility. This isn’t coincidence – it’s corporate policy overwriting community values.
The Community Is Already Migrating
LinkedIn reactions to Adafruit’s coverage reveal an ecosystem preparing to leave. Notably, Venky Raju, CTO at ColorTokens, declared bluntly: “It was great knowing you Arduino, RIP. Hello, RP2040 and ESP32, hope we have a great future ahead.”
Similarly, board design engineer Frank DeLaTorre was even harsher: “QCOMM does not understand anything about the Maker space. They are a greedy corporation that doesn’t give a crap about the community that Arduino has built over the past 10+ years.”
Consequently, Adafruit’s official assessment pulled no punches: “The changes mark a clear break from the open-hardware ethos that built the platform.”
This isn’t empty complaining. Rather, engineers are actively planning migration to ESP32 (not owned by major corporations), RP2040 (backed by Raspberry Pi Foundation’s community-first approach), and ironically, STM32 chips that already power the new Arduino UNO Q. Clearly, when industry leaders like Adafruit publicly criticize you, the exodus has begun.
This Is Oracle/Sun All Over Again
Corporate acquisitions of open-source projects follow a predictable script, and Arduino is hitting every beat.
For instance, when Oracle bought Sun Microsystems in 2010, the pattern was identical. Oracle gutted OpenOffice’s development team, prompting the community to fork LibreOffice. Similarly, MySQL faced immediate existential threats, spawning the MariaDB fork. Hudson became Jenkins after Oracle’s abandonment. OpenSolaris died entirely as Oracle focused on commercial variants.
More recently, HashiCorp changed Terraform’s license to Business Source License before IBM’s $6.4 billion acquisition in February 2025. Predictably, the community forked to OpenTofu under the Linux Foundation, and companies built on Terraform rapidly switched. License changes and corporate acquisitions are two sides of the same coin.
Therefore, the community has learned this lesson: when corporations acquire grassroots open-source projects, community values die first. Forking becomes the only defense.
Why This Matters Beyond Arduino
This isn’t about reverse-engineering clauses in Terms of Service. Instead, it’s about what happens when Silicon Valley buys grassroots technology.
Qualcomm doesn’t understand maker culture because it doesn’t need to. Indeed, it’s a $200 billion chip corporation built on patent licensing and IP protection – the antithesis of “hack everything freely.” The cultural mismatch is complete and intentional.
In fact, the economics tell the real story. The new Arduino UNO Q costs $45-55, nearly double the traditional UNO’s $30 price point. Furthermore, cloud services require subscriptions. User data has value, hence integration into Qualcomm’s ecosystem. Clearly, open source doesn’t maximize quarterly profits, so open source gets restricted.
Arduino built 20 years of trust on a simple promise: all schematics free, all code public, build your own from scratch. However, that promise died in November, one month after Qualcomm’s checkbook opened. Trust is binary in open source. You either respect community values completely, or you don’t. Specifically, Arduino chose Qualcomm’s money over maker trust.
The lesson for the open-source hardware community is brutal but clear: corporate acquisition and community values are fundamentally incompatible. Once you’re bought, your principles die. Money always wins.
