When Qualcomm announced its acquisition of Arduino in October 2025, the tinkerer and maker community watched nervously. Large corporate acquisitions rarely end well for open platforms after all, and enshittification is something that often follows.
And now, what’s followed is unsettling. Adafruit Industries, makers of popular development boards and a respected voice in the open hardware space, have sounded the alarm.
According to Adafruit, the new policies introduce sweeping user-license provisions, broaden data collection (particularly around AI usage), and embed long-term account data retention, all while integrating user information into Qualcomm’s broader data ecosystem.
Section 7.1 grants Arduino a perpetual, irrevocable license over anything you upload. Your code, projects, forum posts, and comments all fall under this. This remains in effect even after you delete your account. Arduino retains rights to your content indefinitely.
Arduino has always been a kinda shitified version of Wiring. The “founders” stole it from one of their grad students and have been making kinda dumb decisions since.
The main thing they’ve been good at is marketing. Arduino is a great name, but stumbling into the oddly positioned headers to make the shields unique is a good example of kinda dumb choices. Also the infighting with the board maker and ex-professors.
Wiring is a terrible name for a language, and completely unsearchable, but here’s a link to the originators of the wiring language (what became arduino) if you’re interested.
https://wiring.org.co/