Arduino Hosts Q&A on the Arduino UNO Q, Once Again States Its "100% Commitment" to Open Source Ethos

Members of the Arduino team, along with colleagues from new corporate owner Qualcomm, on-device machine learning partner Edge Impulse, and microcontroller provider STMicroelectronics, have spent an hour answering the community's question in an ask me anything (AMA) video stream — and have, again, reiterated the company's continued support for open source software and open hardware and its plans to continue working with non-Qualcomm partners on hardware projects.

"We have been listening to the community closely and were eager to answer your questions through this AMA," the Arduino team says of the stream, "to provide you with information straight from the source, bringing together experts from across the Arduino ecosystem: Andrea Richetta (Arduino Principal Product Evangelist), Adam Benzion (Director, Strategic Partnerships at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.), Rami Mouro (Senior Engineer and Developer Advocate at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.), Louis Moreau (Head of Developer Relations at Edge Impulse), and Erwan Gouriou (Principal Software Engineer at STMicroelectronics)."

That selection of company representatives is easily explained by a quick look at the new Arduino UNO Q, the first device in the Arduino UNO family to switch to being a fully-functional standalone-capable single-board computer rather than a microcontroller development board: Arduino designed it, Qualcomm owns Arduino and also provides the Dragonwing system-on-chip at the heart of the board, Edge Impulse handles its on-board edge artificial intelligence (edge AI) capabilities, and STMicro provides its on-board microcontroller for real-time workloads.

Naturally, the biggest question facing the team: recent changes to Arduino's terms and conditions, which had been interpreted — incorrectly, the company says — by the community as an attempt to lock down previously-open software and hardware and even give Qualcomm a license to users' own software projects. "Will Arduino remain open source? This question came up multiple times and in various forms," the team says. "The answer was unequivocal: yes. Adam [Benzion, Qualcomm] emphasized that there's a 100% commitment to maintain Arduino's open source ethos. The Gerber files for UNO Q were released publicly shortly after launch. The board runs Zephyr RTOS [Real-Time Operating System] under the hood, and Arduino engineers are actively contributing upstream. Actions matter more than words, and Arduino's actions demonstrate ongoing commitment to open source."

Other topics covered during the hour-long Q&A session include how the Arduino App Lab works, the "unique dual-brain architecture" of the microprocessor-and-microcontroller Arduino UNO Q, and the resources available to developers both new and old. The panel also took the time to reiterate its support for multiple hardware vendors, following concerns that Qualcomm's ownership of Arduino would lead to a move away from partnership with companies like Microchip and Renesas. "Adam [Benzion, Qualcomm] was direct," the team notes: "Arduino will continue to maintain its multi-vendor commitment. The company will continue working with STMicroelectronics, Microchip, Renesas, and other partners."

The full video is embedded above.