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Arduino
Answers by David Cuartielles, The Arduino Foundation
> What are the aims of the project you are involved in?
Create open tools (software and hardware) for prototyping, (self-) education,
and electronic literacy in the electronic age.
> How is the project organised?
The project as from next week will be a foundation registered in the U.S. The
foundation will count with a board, initially consisting in the so-called
Arduino team. The main consultive organization is the Developers team. Anybody
can enroll that group. Our three-layered structure is closed with the community
of users. In general is the personal involvement what brings people to
participate of the different activities of the Arduino community.
The
foundational papers will establish how to become part of the board, which are
the decision taking mechanisms, etc.
> How do you support the work financially and what impact does this have on your project?
Arduino, as many other software/hardware projects is supported by institutions
and companies that benefit somehow of the community and the relationship to the
users. The only property of the Arduino Foundation is the Arduino name.
People willing to use the Arduino name for their Arduino related
products have to pay a royalty that will be used to maintain the community
website, finance development of new tools, etc.
Until now, the whole
economical investment needed to launch the project was made by members of the
board, and they got their capital back. This means the project is running by
itself. The accumulated revenues due to the use of the name until now are going
to be the initial capital for the Foundation. Will help us to pay for
accountants, lawyers, etc.
On the other hand, Arduino allows the
generation of medium size business around it. Either in the form of sell-able
IPR (people get hired to develop tools on top of Arduino), through education
(workshops, academic courses...), or just by self-created projects.
> What do you feel you have achieved, and what are the problems you face?
We have achieved the creation of a standard in how to educate about the use of
technology. Arduino courses don't require any prior knowledge and people
participating will learn how to put electronic components together, but also how
to program, how to make searches for information on the internet, how to
participate from an online community, etc.
The problems we face today is
to be completely overloaded. We expect the new structure will help us to make
things easier for everybody.
> Are there any past projects/models which have inspired you?
Before I was member of a design collective called Aeswad, based in Malmo,
Sweden. There we had a pretty anarchic way of dealing with projects, deciding
how to be paid, etc. The financial model we had was really thought through and
helped me to understand that distributed organizations need of a completely
different degree of freedom that corporations do. On the other hand I could
learn how to make (a lot of) money making the things I like the most and letting
the others do the same.
Distributed strategies for world-wide
organizations can actually provide a way of living to their members. It is just
that nobody will explain you how to make it happen. There is no business school
focusing on that. Corporate is a cancer we gotta eliminate from society if we
are about to make this new way of thinking/living/working possible.
> What are your hopes for the future?
I hope that one day I will be able of leaving the Arduino Foundation letting a
stable sustainable world-wide structure for others to continue creating things
and contributing to the development of society.
www.arduino.cc
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