ArduinoGuy

Also: Don't DOWNVOTE people because you disagree with them. DISCUSS with them. Downvote me if I am being an asshole. To downvote because you disagree is not the right use of downvote.

I actually did read the entire article. Most people seem to be reacting to the title, Arduino clearly attributed Wiring, they didn't just steal it and not say anything:

34. Banzi is the creator of the Programma2003 Development Platform, a precursor of the many ARDUINO-branded products. See: http://sourceforge.net/projects/programma2003/. Banzi was also the Master’s Thesis advisor of Hernando Barragan whose work would result in the Wiring Development Platform which inspired Arduino.

This was probably written by a lawyer and not Massimo himself. Its a legal filing. It says clearly Arduino is inspired directly by Wiring. What else do you wan't from an attribution of credit? Should Massimo get a tattoo that says "Wiring" on it and put it on his forehead?

What I am arguing against is that people shouldn't be using the word "steal" in reference to forking an open source project and building a business on top of it. People do that every day. They aren't expected to walk around giving credit to the originators for everything they do afterwards.

Steal is when I take something private, locked down, under patent and use it to profit. Show me what was stolen that wasn't given for free.

Arduino did give them credit, they said it originated from Wiring. The other factual details where relatively minor, something that could easily be confused by most people.

I love how the voting system in Hacker News is used as a weapon to suppress all dissent. What did I say that was trolling? Creating a new account because I work too near this field.

It wasn't ripped off, it was directly forked from the underlying open source project, which is what you are supposed to do in open source if you want to take the project in a new direction and build a business on it. If you don't want people using your open source project drum roll don't open source it or change the license terms to prevent uses like this. I think many people in this thread have a very tenuous grasp of what open source is.

Forking an open source project != ripping it off people. I feel like Hacker News is the last place this distinction should have to be made.

The point of writing a thesis in academia is to share an idea and encourage other people adopt it. Other people did adopt it, that's what an effective thesis is.

Everything that was "stolen" here was either code or an idea which was made freely available for others. What people in this thread need to understand is that if you want to build a business, don't give away all your source code and ideas and act surprised when someone listens to you...

Why open source a project and let other people fork it if you are going to get completely bent out of shape when someone does fork it and build on it? What is the point of open source if that isn't exactly what happens?

If you put two Steve Jobs in a room and ask them to work together, the result isn't always going to be mecha-Jobs, it will just as often be a fight over clashing visions. Open source is great because it lets people pursue those visions. Sometimes it isn't going to work out.