I'm just going to be the one who says it: Arduino has always been a money-grab and a grift.
Open-source was just marketing for Arduino, and it worked for them when they were selling an undifferentiated dev kit for 10x the price it should actually have had (and at least a 30x markup on their actual manufacturing cost). They then load down those dev kits with software that is so inefficient that it upsells people on huge chips for problems that could otherwise be solved with a 10-cent chip. On top of that, the initial Arduino software was pretty much stolen from a grad student, who got no credit, and using open source also gave them free contributions from motivated users.
Fast forward to now and they have a "community" and are trying to start selling more complicated dev kits with the same ridiculous markup, and have found themselves unable to compete with Chinese companies that charge a fair price. The end result, killing the openness, is inevitable.
Open-source was just marketing for Arduino, and it worked for them when they were selling an undifferentiated dev kit for 10x the price it should actually have had (and at least a 30x markup on their actual manufacturing cost). They then load down those dev kits with software that is so inefficient that it upsells people on huge chips for problems that could otherwise be solved with a 10-cent chip. On top of that, the initial Arduino software was pretty much stolen from a grad student, who got no credit, and using open source also gave them free contributions from motivated users.
Fast forward to now and they have a "community" and are trying to start selling more complicated dev kits with the same ridiculous markup, and have found themselves unable to compete with Chinese companies that charge a fair price. The end result, killing the openness, is inevitable.