Enshittification of Arduino Begins? Qualcomm Starts Clamping Down (itsfoss.com)

After Qualcomm’s October 2025 acquisition of Arduino, new Terms of Service and Privacy Policy published under the combined ownership have alarmed the maker and open‑hardware community. Adafruit flagged sweeping changes: Section 7.1 grants Arduino a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty‑free and sublicensable license to anything users upload (code, projects, forum posts) that persists even after account deletion; users are barred from reverse‑engineering the platform without permission; and privacy language routes user data — including AI usage signals and data from minors — across Qualcomm Group companies with long‑term retention. Qualcomm and Arduino counter that hardware support (including boards using non‑Qualcomm microcontrollers) and the platform’s “core spirit” won’t change, but the legal and data‑sharing shifts are now in effect. For the AI/ML community these changes matter because they change ownership and data‑flow assumptions that underpin open research, reproducibility, and safe model development. Perpetual, sublicensable rights over uploaded code and project files could enable Qualcomm to reuse community artifacts to train models or integrate them into commercial offerings without royalties or notice. Expanded collection of “AI usage” metadata and cross‑company sharing raises privacy and dataset provenance concerns — especially for educators and researchers working with minors or sensitive designs. The immediate hardware landscape is largely unchanged, but the new legal and data regimes create a potential chilling effect on contributions, reverse engineering, and open collaboration unless the community secures clearer safeguards.