A three-year-old schism in the open source hardware project Arduino has been healed.

On Saturday, the two rival groups—Arduino LLC (Arduino.cc) and Arduino Srl (Arduino.org)—announced that they had "settled their differences," and agreed to merge. At present, the similarly-designed sites both carry the official Arduino logo, and both sell official Arduino products.

The electronics platform Arduino describes itself as "the world’s leading open-source ecosystem for educators, Makers and IoT developers of all ages." Its board plans are published under Creative Commons (CC) licences, while its software is released as open source. Ars interviewed one of Arduino's co-founders, Massimo Banzi, back in 2013.

Two years later, Banzi explained to Make magazine how the rival Arduino organisations came about:

Last November, [Arduino's main boards manufacturer] SmartProjects appointed a new CEO, Mr. Musto, who renamed the company to Arduino Srl and created a website called 'Arduino' copying our [Arduino LLC] graphics and layout, claiming to have invented Arduino with no mention of us four [co-founders]. They even started printing this new URL on all the new boards. The last straw came a few weeks ago when this person gave interviews to a number of Italian newspapers claiming to be the new CEO of “Arduino” and implying that I was stepping down to dedicate myself to “non profit” activities.

A blog post that appeared on both the Arduino.cc and Arduino.org sites explained that "At the end of 2016, the newly created 'Arduino Holding' will become the single point of contact for the wholesale distribution of all current and future products, and will continue to bring tremendous innovations to the market."

In addition, a new not-for-profit "Arduino Foundation" will be created, whose role is to maintain the open source Arduino desktop IDE. It will also offer a variety of scholarships, and promote community and developer initiatives.

Ars asked both Arduinos for comment on the healing of wounds, but hadn't received any response at time of publication.

Listing image by Arduino.