Freeduino-historical: Files and history of the ~2007 "Freeduino" project.
Back in about 2007, Arduino was small but rapidly growing. Diecilmilla had been released, but the publication of its CAD files was behind, and there was noise that perhaps the "open source hardware" days of Arduino were behind them. Supplies of real Arduinos were a bit short, and there were a couple of users who were upset that they could not manufacture their own "in bulk" for classroom situations, and several vendors that were upset that they were unable to negotiate the ability to sell genuine Arduinos with Arduino themselves (or at least, not at terms that they liked. (But I think mostly just due to supply constraints.))
Anyway, "we" wound up with one particularly passionate user (Daniel), one motivated vendor (NKC Electronics), a low-level guy with some EE and low-level background looking to improve his EAGLE skills (Me! (WestfW)), and a couple of other contibuters (notably Solarbotics and Scott), determined to create a "truly open-source" version of the Arduino without any of the restrictions that the Arduino Company seemed to be considering (not even a Trademark!)
We never met. There was much discussion via email, and a forum that Daniel set up. Eventually, I had four EAGLE designs mostly similar to the Duemilanove - one using mostly throughole components, and one each using 0603, 0805, an 1206 SMT components. I thought we were still discussing things, and suddenly NKC piped up with "Well, I've ordered 100 bare PCBs of each version, and we'll see how they go"! I was a bit shocked; I had been putting a lot of time into the project, but JUST time. Ordering 400 PCBs represented "real money"!
Once a couple of boards of each type had been assembled (at/by NKC), a decision was made to focus on the through-hole design, so that it could be sold as a kit. This would both appeal the the people coming at Arduino from the Electronics Hobbyist side of the world, as well as saving some manufacturing costs (this was well before "cheap SMT assembly services" were common.) Additional revisions to the design were made with this in mind. For example, the board was expanded slightly to make more room, and the voltage regulator was changed to a full-sized TO220.
I guess the design was a success. NKC sold Freeduino kits for quite a few years, Solarbotics sold their (somewhat diffrent) design, and ... various PCBs appeared from strange places, complete with the little "PCB by WestfW" trace in the corner. Also, Arduino re-committed to Open-source principles, and apparently started accepting more vendors as resellers, making the design somewhat superfulous. And then the cheap clones from China appeared, along with cheaper PCB services, a more formal OSHW movement, and newer, better, and lower-cost designs showed up from ... lots of places. I think Freeduino is no longer necessary. But I like to think that it was a useful "nudge" toward the way things are today.
See also:
https://forum.arduino.cc/t/arduino-vs-freeduino-what-is-the-difference/24209/2 https://forum.arduino.cc/t/freeduino-universe/6800/ https://forum.arduino.cc/t/diecimila-pcb-files/2116/
