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While I agree I'd like more open hardware (And Olimex comes to mind here as a vendor trying to deliver) but the reality is no one truly hits that fully open sou
by KirinDave 7y ago
While I agree I'd like more open hardware (And Olimex comes to mind here as a vendor trying to deliver) but the reality is no one truly hits that fully open source benchmark for general purpose SBCs, yet.
This shouldn't disqualify the RPi, in my opinion. We're moving incrementally towards a world of open firmware and open hardware from a totally closed world. It feels like we're making forward progress. We shouldn't punish incremental steps on this path, nor should we stop asking for more open hardware.
- bsder 7y agoAs far as I know, the TI-based stuff (Beagle<foo> and others) is all open with the possible exception of the accelerated 3D video driver. I can get volume pricing and delivery dates on all parts. I can get documentation on latencies and functional units. That's a pretty big difference. All this means that people serious about a product have to avoid a RaspberryPi, and this is terribly unfortunate because it has such a wonderful community.
- KirinDave 7y agoIf you don't need any form of accelerated graphics then yeah, you don't want a pi and it's easier to get a more open board architecture. If you're making your own product tho it's way more likely you're not just gonna by someone else's board and jam it in there. This feels like a dramatically different category of thing than what the Pi is, to the point where comparison starts to get less meaningful. But frankly I'm not sure the RPi folks should give a damn. They're selling whole computers. That they don't fit into someone else's product pipeline is unsurprising. It's like complaining you can't turn a MacBook air into a blade. It's true, but it's also a bit wrong to expect you could have in the first place.