
Federico Musto has stepped down as Arduino CEO - tdrnd
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/01/federico-musto-is-out-as-arduino-ceo/
======
erikb
TL;DR major shareholders want to make profit, therefore found a way to kick
out visionary CEO to replace with MBA/financial CEO. Without a publicliy valid
reason they just complained about the CV, a document which barely ever is 100%
honest. But since the old CEO doesn't seem to make a fuss of it, the severance
package probably was good enough.

~~~
wolfgke
> Without a publicliy valid reason they just complained about the CV, a
> document which barely ever is 100% honest.

At least in Germany lying in the CV is considered as a _very serious_ issue.
What you called "barely 100% correct" would thus probably be called "fraud" in
Germany.

~~~
erikb
Can you be more specific? This is the first time I hear someone say that. I'm
educated to individually write CVs for each company related to what they need.
I never needed to provide any proof either.

~~~
wolfgke
> Can you be more specific?

Here are some articles about this topic (all in German):

> [http://hoesmann.eu/im-lebenslauf-gelogen-was-sind-die-
> jurist...](http://hoesmann.eu/im-lebenslauf-gelogen-was-sind-die-
> juristischen-folgen/)

> [https://arbeitgeber.monster.de/hr/personal-
> tipps/rekrutierun...](https://arbeitgeber.monster.de/hr/personal-
> tipps/rekrutierung-verguetung/bewerberauswahl/frisierte-bewerbungen-
> entlarven-74644.aspx)

> [http://www.spiegel.de/karriere/luegen-bei-der-bewerbung-
> das-...](http://www.spiegel.de/karriere/luegen-bei-der-bewerbung-das-droht-
> bei-lebenslauf-manipulation-a-1041634.html)

>
> [https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/karriere/tipps/article1349518...](https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/karriere/tipps/article13495184/Wie-
> Arbeitgeber-Blender-und-Aufschneider-entlarven.html)

Principally if a lie in your CV is uncovered, you can immediately be fired
(even if it was not fraud in the legal sense; being a relevant reason to give
you the job suffices), even if you worked for years in the company. So be
honest.

> I'm educated to individually write CVs for each company related to what they
> need.

I am not a native English speaker - so I am not sure what you are trying to
say here.

> I never needed to provide any proof either.

Some time ago as a sick leave cover I was in a commission for a rather
prestigious academic scholarship for students. I had a lot of exaggerations
and concealments in the application forms and CVs to uncover. If someone
uncovered such one in the selection interview, you could be sure that the
candidate would not be selected. For example so many candidates who claim to
be interested in opera - and so easy to check. Or so many candidates who claim
to be seriously interested in Linux or Android - no, only having installed
some GNU/Linux distribution or having rooted your phone is not what I consider
as serious interest. Or some guy who claimed that for altruistic reasons he
developed some math training app for iOS for disabled pupils - but concealing
that it had in-app purchase. If he had honestly claimed there was interest in
entrepreneurship, this would have been no problem (surely even very positive).
But since he claimed he did it just out of social conscience and concealed the
in-app purchase, this was a central reason why the commission did not trust
his integrity and decided against giving him the scholarship.

Similar things also hold for job applications. Things _will_ typically be
checked in the job interview - especially if they are relevant for the job. So
taking an example from one of the above articles: Don't claim that you apply
because you are looking for new challenges if the honest reason is that you
had trouble with the previous boss (the new employer can simply ask the old
one if he suspects this reason). Also don't claim that you were on parental
leave or travelling the world if you were unemployed at that time etc.

~~~
erikb
I honestly believe even many Germans don't know that, because I really never
heard anybody saying something like this before. So thanks a lot, I certainly
try to honor it now that I know it.

~~~
wolfgke
> I honestly believe even many Germans don't know that, because I really never
> heard anybody saying something like this before.

I would rather say that at least for jobs it is so deeply ingrained in German
culture that most German would not even consider that somewhere else such a
behavior is tolerated.

------
the-dude
I am confused : is this the evil Arduino or the non-evil one?

~~~
iuguy
It's not really evil as such. It's more the intersection of money and greed.

Musto has lied about a lot of things (some more bizarre than others), and
clearly gives zero thoughts about the community side of things. Banzi and co
have also some interesting history when it comes to acknowledgement of
Arduino's history, especially in relation to the original wiring project and
processing.

There isn't really an evil or non-evil Arduino. The original Arduino is a
modification to Hernando Barragan's Wiring board to support the Atmega8
chipset. Banzi was Barragan's supervisor. Banzi and a bunch of other guys at
IDII forked the project (for reasons Barragan says he doesn't know) and
founded Arduino, eventually building the Uno, still based on the Wiring board.

The Nano and Pro Mini followed, and when Arduino realised there was money to
be made, proceeded to fall out with each other.

Now we're in a situation where both Arduino orgs are claiming to be open
source, but only some products are open source. Deals have been made with
companies that will only ever provide binary blobs and require NDAs that mean
that there are Arduino products out there that will _never_ be open source
hardware.

If Arduino was to turn around and say, "Hey guys, the Arduino Uno, Nano and
Pro Mini are open source. The Yun, ARM boards and others aren't", I think
people would understand. Instead, Arduino uses ambiguity to hide it's open
source status.

There's huge sums of money at stake, and that's what's driving it. The push
from Maker Magazine and Adafruit may have put pressure on Musto to step down
(or not), but it's not like Adafruit don't have their own competing boards,
which makes it a little difficult for Adafruit to get too close without facing
possible accusations of competitive badmouthing.

~~~
makomk
The push from Adafruit at least seemed rather bizarre and cynical to me. All
of a sudden, they started caring about the open-source status of hardware that
predated the Arduino split and using it as justification for why Musto was
evil and needed to go. This wasn't something they'd cared about before.
Indeed, when Bre Pettis and Makerbot went against their loudly-proclaimed
principles and took their 3D printers (which borrowed heavily from other's
open designs) closed source while hiding behind vague statements, Adafruit's
response was to post a piece that compared the people who criticised Makerbot
to "fundamentalists" who "blow things up" and claimed to be defending "open
source innovation and polite disagreement" by doing so:
[https://blog.adafruit.com/2012/09/21/in-defense-of-open-
sour...](https://blog.adafruit.com/2012/09/21/in-defense-of-open-source-
innovation-and-polite-disagreement/)

Honestly, ever since the Makerbot fiasco it's increasingly felt like the main
principle in open hardware is what makes the right clique of insiders most
money, and this hasn't done much to change my opinion on that.

~~~
bcg1
I find your post to be cynical.

The article you attribute to Adafruit is not written by them, they just linked
to it from their blog, ostensibly as food for thought and discussion.

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to interact with Limor and PT over
email after they reached out to me in response to a project I'd posted on a
forum. I found them to be gracious, supportive, and genuine, and based on the
conversations we had I find your claim that they don't care about open-source
hardware to be dubious.

~~~
makomk
There was no discussion. They systematically deleted comments that disagreed
or that (correctly) interpreted Makerbot's comments as them going closed
source. I personally had one deleted for pointing out that the
"fundamentalists" were far politer and less damaging than Bre Pettis's own
public shaming of newcomers to the open hardware community who merely had
trouble understanding the proper format they should release their hardware
files in, and that politely holding someone to their own standards isn't
really fundamentalism. Suggestions from others that comparing opponents to
terrorists is not in fact contributing to polite disagreement got similarly
short shrift.

~~~
ptorrone
@makomk the only reason we'd delete a comment is if you cursed, made personal
attacks, etc.

we covered makerbot going closed-source on adafruit, including the class
action lawsuit.
[https://blog.adafruit.com/?main_page=blog&s=makerbot](https://blog.adafruit.com/?main_page=blog&s=makerbot)
additionally, we covered the close-sourcing of the arduino.org products
(federico's arduino) -
[https://blog.adafruit.com/?s=%23freearduino](https://blog.adafruit.com/?s=%23freearduino)

and just to be super-duper clear, my opinion is that it was a mistake for
makerbot to go closed source the way they did.

------
feederico
I wonder what was the amount on the check, given that he claimed the business
could grow from 15 to 50M [https://www.open-electronics.org/from-arduino-to-
genuino-the...](https://www.open-electronics.org/from-arduino-to-genuino-the-
reasons-for-a-choice/)

Even if 50M was a bold one, I wouldn't have sold 50% of the company for less
than 20M.

I fear Arduino is gonna pay a mortgage for a long time, mining its ability to
innovate.

------
EGreg
I thought everyone there already suspected he was the CEO? But I'm glad he
finally came out with it. Must have taken some courage!

~~~
austenallred
I genuinely can't tell if you're serious or not

~~~
EGreg
Nope, it was a joke responding to the title itself only.

------
dovdovdov
Doing business in open-source is hard.

I never really fancied Arduino as a business, then came the Raspberry Pi
Foundation and I found my true love.

~~~
detaro
What do you prefer about the Raspberry Pi Foundation?

~~~
dovdovdov
What I actually meant that I switched platforms...

