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Most of the comments so far seem to have missed the point of the RPi specifically, which is that it was always intended more as an educational tool than commerc
by mangecoeur 8y ago
Most of the comments so far seem to have missed the point of the RPi specifically, which is that it was always intended more as an educational tool than commercial solution. The idea of the RPi foundation is to promote experimenting and hacking by selling a board cheap enough that you don't care too much if you ruin it.
This was explicitly a response to the rise of smartphones(/smart-whatevers) which turned computing into magic by sealing off all the components and preventing any hands-on work - students were enrolling in to computer science degrees with nearly no understanding of how a computer is fundamentally put together.
There is no reason for RPi to change from their very successful mission - they will keep putting out the best hardware they can squeeze into their fixed price point.
- dbuder 8y agoThey have recently warmed up to the RPi being used in commercial products. No one else in the space gets the volume/goodwill discounts the RPi foundation does and the Chinese SBC producers are yet to provide decent software support and might have to raise their prices if they did.
- aurailious 8y agoBut just because its primary purpose is education doesn't mean it will/would/should always be that. Its sort of like curb cuts, something that starts out trying to fix one problem but then its quickly seen how many other problems it helps fix or other capabilities to enable.
- HeyLaughingBoy 8y agoThe original point of the RPi is meaningless if the majority of the use cases are something completely different. For me, doing embedded consulting, the Pi is a cheap, simple way to get a touchscreen and/or network capability without jumping through the hoops of Arduino add-ons.
- kingosticks 8y agoI don't think that's true when the Rpi is entirely under the control of a non-profit. They don't care how many you buy, you are only further funding their goal and so far that goal has trumped everything/anyone else. Which I think is great.