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Comment by sliverstorm | Hacker News Reader

I am neither surprised nor offended. Atmel makes their money on hardware (have you noticed how expensive AVR's are compared to most other chips?). Microchip instead sells cheap hardware and licenses software. They explore limited free software to lower the barrier to entry, but they have to keep the secret sauce. That's just their business model.

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I wouldn't begrudge Microchip their business model if they would drop this "open source" claim. Here's the first sentence of their press release about the ChipKit:

  "Microchip Technology Inc., a leading provider of microcontroller, analog
  and Flash-IP solutions, and Digilent, Inc. today launched the first
  32-bit-microcontroller-based, open-source development platform that
  is compatible with Arduino™ hardware and software."

As someone who makes a 32-bit-microcontroller-based development platform that is actually open-source, I don't want them claiming membership in my tribe. It's like exaggerating the specs of your hardware-- don't call it 1 GHz if it only runs at 800 MHz.

Of course, it would even better if they would join the open source tribe for real-- maybe I could have stood on their shoulders instead of next to them.

it's worse than that... chipKIT isn't even the first "32-bit-microcontroller-based, open-source development platform" - maple is.

http://leaflabs.com/devices/maple/

when chipKIT met with us before launch (adafruit, limor fried and myself) we said this wasn't the first one along with a lot of other things we wanted to see them address and change, they didn't.

(Hi pt!)

I think you left out "Arduino-compatible." But I agree with the sentiment-- that's definitely poor form exhibited by Microchip.

that's right! they also said with that "Arduino-compatible" and on the box it said "100% arduino compatible" - it wasn't. and they called it "Uno" which is the same name as the latest arduino :(

Back in the 90's, I was something of a PIC fanboy because their documentation was so damn good, and the PIC16F84 was great to learn on.

Are they just jerks now, or is there some more charitable explanation? Obviously, the company is filled with all sorts of different people, but are the people who have the power to change the marketing claims deliberately blowing off the truth?

marketing tends towards an exercise in who can lie the most and get away with it.

"That's just their business model." is not a valid excuse from moral obligations.

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