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There's 2 separate but somewhat related communities here - open source and open hardware. Most open source people don't care that much about hardware. They just
by problems 9y ago
There's 2 separate but somewhat related communities here - open source and open hardware. Most open source people don't care that much about hardware. They just want a cheap and tiny Linux box, maybe with some GPIO pins.
And really, you can take it further - is espressif really better? You can buy the chip, but it's not like they give you the actual transistor-level design so you can modify it and redistribute it as you so choose.
- bsder 9y ago> Most open source people don't care that much about hardware. That may be, but, in this case, Mozilla needs to care and should know better. Especially when there are perfectly fine alternative options. Broadcom can torpedo this if it starts impinging on their own business in some way. That's not the kind of power you want to hand to somebody when you are trying to promulgate something.
- problems 9y ago> Broadcom can torpedo this if it starts impinging on their own business in some way. That's not the kind of power you want to hand to somebody when you are trying to promulgate something. Not really - if broadcom torpedos it, tomorrow the raspi guys buy Mediatek or Allwinner chips instead or we switch to a different board maker. They don't go bust on the spot and almost everything software wise would remain the same even on a different board. Plenty of similar boards are already using these other chips, there's lots of competition in the ARM SoC space.
- kennydude 9y agoI think they only picked Broadcom because the founder used to work for them and knew how the chips worked.