loading . . . Did Qualcomm kill Arduino for good? Six weeks ago, Qualcomm acquired Arduino. The maker community immediately worried that Qualcomm would kill the open-source ethos that made Arduino the lingua franca of hobby electronics.
This week, Arduino published updated terms and conditions and a new privacy policy, clearly rewritten by Qualcommâs lawyers. The changes confirm the communityâs worst fears: Arduino is no longer an open commons. Itâs becoming just another corporate platform.
Hereâs whatâs at stake, what Qualcomm got wrong, and what might still be salvaged, drawing from community discussions across maker forums and sites.
**What changed?**
The new terms read like standard corporate boilerplate: mandatory arbitration, data integration with Qualcommâs global ecosystem, export controls, AI use restrictions. For any other SaaS platform, this would be unremarkable.
But Arduino isnât SaaS. Itâs the foundation of the maker ecosystem.
The most dangerous change is Arduino now explicitly states that using their platform grants you no patent licenses whatsoever. You canât even argue one is implied.
This means Qualcomm could potentially assert patents against your projects if you built them using Arduino tools, Arduino examples, or Arduino-compatible hardware.
And hereâs the disconnect, baffling makers. Arduinoâs IDE is licensed under AGPL. Their CLI is GPL v3. Both licenses explicitly require that you can reverse engineer the software. But the new Qualcomm terms explicitly forbid reverse engineering âthe Platform.â
**Whatâs really going on?**
The community is trying to figure out what is Qualcommâs actual intent. Are these terms just bad lawyering with SaaS lawyers applying their standard template to cloud services, not realizing Arduino is different? Or is Qualcomm testing how much they can get away with before the community revolts? Or is this a first step toward locking down the ecosystem they just bought?
Some people point out that âthe Platformâ might only mean Arduinoâs cloud services (forums, Arduino Cloud, Project Hub) not the IDE and CLI that everyone actually uses.
If thatâs true, Qualcomm needs to say so, explicitly, and in plain language. Because library maintainers are likely wondering whether contributing to Arduino repos puts them at legal risk. And hardware makers are questioning whether âArduino-compatibleâ is still safe to advertise.
**Why Adafruitâs alarm matters**
Adafruit has been vocal about the dangers of this acquisition. Some dismiss Adafruitâs criticism as self-serving. After all, they sell competing hardware and promote CircuitPython. But that misses who Adafruit is.
Adafruit has been the moral authority on open hardware for decades. Theyâve made their living proving you can build a successful business on open principles. When they sound the alarm, itâs not about competition, itâs about principle.
What theyâre calling out isnât that Qualcomm bought Arduino. Itâs that Qualcommâs lawyers fundamentally donât understand what they bought. Arduino wasnât valuable because it was just a microcontroller company. It was valuable because it was a commons. And you canât apply enterprise legal frameworks to a commons without destroying it.
Adafruit gets this. Theyâve built their entire business on this. Thatâs why their criticism carries weight.
**What Qualcomm doesnât seem to understand**
Qualcomm probably thought they were buying an IoT hardware company with a loyal user base.
They werenât. They bought the IBM PC of the maker world.
Arduinoâs value was never just the hardware. Their boards have been obsolete for years. Their value is the standard.
_The Arduino IDE is the lingua franca of hobby electronics._
Millions of makers learned on it, even if they moved to other hardware. ESP32, STM32, Teensy, Raspberry Pi Pico â none of them are Arduino hardware, but they all work with the Arduino IDE.
Thousands of libraries are âArduino libraries.â Tutorials assume Arduino. University curricula teach Arduino. When you search âhow to read a sensor,â the answer comes back in Arduino code.
This is the ecosystem Qualcommâs lawyers just dropped legal uncertainty onto.
If Qualcommâs lawyers start asserting control over the IDE, CLI, or core libraries under restrictive terms, they will poison the entire maker ecosystem. Even people who never buy Arduino hardware are dependent on Arduino software infrastructure.
Qualcomm didnât just buy a company. They bought a commons. And now they inadvertently are taking steps that are destroying what made it valuable.
**What are makers supposed to do?**
There has been some buzz of folks just leaving the Arduino environment behind. But Arduino IDE alternatives such as PlatformIO and VSCode are not in any way beginner friendly. If the Arduino IDE goes, then thereâs a huge problem.
I remember when Hypercard ended. There were alternatives, but none so easy. I donât think I really coded again for almost 20 years until I picked up the Arduino IDE (go figure).
If something happens to the Arduino IDE, even if its development stalls or becomes encumbered, thereâs no replacement for that easy onboarding. Weâd lose many promising new makers because the first step became too steep.
**The institutional knowledge at risk**
But leaving Arduino behind isnât simple. The platformâs success depends on two decades of accumulated knowledge, such as countless Arduino tutorials on YouTube, blogs, and school curricula; open-source libraries that depend on Arduino compatibility; projects in production using Arduino tooling; and university programs built around Arduino as the teaching platform
All of these depend on Arduino remaining open and accessible.
If Qualcomm decided to sunset the open Arduino IDE in favor of a locked-down âArduino Proâ platform, or if they start asserting patent claims, or if uncertainty makes contributors abandon the ecosystem, all that knowledge becomes stranded.
Itâs like Wikipedia going behind a paywall. The value isnât just the content, it is the trust that it remains accessible. Arduinoâs value isnât just the code, itâs the trust that the commons would stay open.
That trust is now gone. And once lost, it hard to get back.
**Why this happened (but doesnât excuse it**)
Letâs be fair to Qualcomm, their lawyers were doing their jobs.
When you acquire a company, you standardize the legal terms; add mandatory arbitration to limit class action exposure; integrate data systems for compliance and auditing; add export controls because you sell to defense contractors; prohibit reverse engineering because thatâs in the template.
For most acquisitions, this is just good corporate hygiene. And Arduino, now part of a megacorp, faces higher liabilities than it did as an independent entity.
But hereâs what Qualcommâs lawyers missed: Arduino isnât a normal acquisition. The community isnât a customer base, itâs a commons. And you canât apply enterprise SaaS legal frameworks to a commons without destroying what made it valuable.
This is tone-deafness, not malice. But the outcome is the same. A community that trusted Arduino no longer does.
Understanding why this happened doesnât excuse it, but it might suggest what needs to happen next.
**What should have happened and how to still save it**
Qualcomm dropped legal boilerplate on the community with zero context and let people discover the contradictions themselves. Thatâs how you destroy trust overnight.
Qualcomm should have announced the changes in advance. They should have given the community weeks, not hours, to understand whatâs changing and why. They should have used plain-language explanations, not just legal documents.
Qualcomm can fix things by explicitly carving out the open ecosystem. They should state clearly that the terms apply to Arduino Cloud services, and the IDE, CLI, and core libraries remain under their existing open source licenses.
Weâd need concrete commitments, such as which repos stay open, which licenses wonât change, whatâs protected from future acquisition decisions. Right now we have vague corporate-speak about âsupporting the community.â
Indeed, they could create some structural protection, as well, by putting IDE, CLI, and core libraries in a foundation that Qualcomm couldnât unilaterally control (think the Linux Foundation model).
Finally, Qualcomm might wish to establish some form of community governance with real representation and real power over the tools the community depends on.
The acquisition is done. The legal integration is probably inevitable. But how itâs done determines whether Arduino survives as a commons or dies as just another Qualcomm subsidiary.
**Whatâs next?**
Arduino may be the toolset that made hobby electronics accessible to millions. But that maker community built Arduino into what it became. Qualcommâs acquisition has thrown that legacy into doubt. Whether through legal confusion, corporate tone-deafness, or deliberate strategy, the communityâs trust is broken.
The next few months will reveal whether this was a stumble or a strategy. If Qualcomm issues clarifications, moves repos to some sort of governance, and explicitly protects the open toolchain, then maybe this is salvageable. If they stay silent, or worse, if IDE development slows or license terms tighten further, then thatâs a signal to find alternatives.
The question isnât whether the open hobby electronics maker community survives. Itâs whether Arduino does. https://www.molecularist.com/2025/11/did-qualcomm-kill-arduino-for-good.html
