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Eben Upton and Raspberry Pi really sold out their user base. When the shortage hit, Eben Upton declared that they’d be prioritizing sales to industrial users.
by andrewstuart 4y ago
Eben Upton and Raspberry Pi really sold out their user base.
When the shortage hit, Eben Upton declared that they’d be prioritizing sales to industrial users. The rationale seemed reasonable: “because if someone’s livelihood depends on raspberry pi then that’s who we’ll take care of first”.
As a result, Raspberry Pi may as well have been a dead computing platform for years to come, and still is. It’s impossible to buy.
After a while I came to realize that industrial buyers don’t deserve first priority. Businesses can take care of themselves. They have money and resources and ingenuity… they can work out alternatives to raspberry pi. They can adjust their designs and software to make do with other hardware.
Then images like this emerged, proving that Eben Upton had given so many raspberry pi’s to industrial users they could build giant clusters to demo for fun, neatly illustrating the abusive relationship where consumers were desperate for machines but Eben was giving them by the truckload to industry:
https://twitter.com/scrumtuous/status/1582897358248910849 https://twitter.com/scrumtuous/status/1582897358248910849
And then I realized that in fact the people who really should have been priority one were kids and schools. Priority two hobbyists. Priority three industrial buyers.
It made me quite mad and really brought into focus that raspberry pi was built on kids, education and hobbyists, and Eben Upton and raspberry pi sold them out and continues to do so.
Eben had recently made noises about allocating some for consumers, but the lions share still goes to industrial users.
In fact raspberry pi is just an industrial computing company that has exploited its users and dropped them and sold them out literally.
Raspberry pi and Eben Upton don’t deserve your business. They treat their loyal community and children as quite literally third rate. Awful customer attitude.
Look elsewhere for little computers, don’t support this abusive relationship.
- codingpanic 4y agoWhile I agree with andrewstuart, there are not many other boards with the community, developer support, and ecosystem backing that Rpi has. Unfortunately, they really put the work in early to make sure they were positioned well in the ARM SBC space. (The fact that you can run some workstation loads with 4 or 8GB of ram on Pi is a bonus) I'm hoping with Risc-V boards coming out, that maybe the cycle can start new and someone else can build a similar community, but actually value them.
- andrewstuart 4y agoIf you can make do with a microcontroller then the esp32 has excellent software. Alternatively maybe buy ex business/government mini machines for less than $35 off eBay. Intel CPUs have better software than rpi. https://www.ebay.com/itm/224882648354?hash=item345c0ce522:g:rI8AAOSw1jJjSyUj&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoOzWMt1R5ynkd0GJMUUUsFd5SpA8QL0NyUy5YabxVEC6n1QxJDLicCFYHzVJA9knGtjke7OQc5mkbwaz6tFJ5SLIam6C9gHvKVXJIP%2BQtf%2FxpV8OhxddgCLU35%2B6Pr6yRg%2B23LIk1Pj4%2Bh4MgeXTzX6R7BYSBSl1Rrhzh7rPjfrD0bFWktBkZM9Leo%2BhbZ%2BQsjrPzyzc4ZyalQZYW11MPv8%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR8rpwcmmYQ https://www.ebay.com/itm/224882648354?hash=item345c0ce522:g:...
- codingpanic 4y agoAs far as buying cheap government computers goes... price is only one factor here. Formfactor and power use are huge wins with ARM SBCs.
- explorigin 4y agoDid you read the description? That $35 computer you linked has "no memory, no cpu, no hard drive".
- rcarr 4y agoAlternative take: Once the chip shortage eventually ends, the company will have a ton of money to invest in schools because they’ve just earned a ton from supplying businesses. And they are likely to keep earning money to pump into education as said businesses are likely to continue using them in the future. Short term pain, long term gain.
- pyb 4y agoYou are correct that the pivot to industry is not particularly fairly to the rest of the user base. Not only that, but it was not very sound business-wise either. RPi's stable, rock-bottom, "cost-plus" pricing policy is great for the educational market, but not particularly compatible with B2B, where you want to be raising your prices as long as the customer is happy to pay. Not only is it a healthier way to run a B2B business, but it would also address the current demand/supply problems in a fairer way. But you couldn't do this without turning your back on the historical user base!
- rcarr 4y agoAlternatively, the fact they are now supplying businesses as well as the educational market means they can benefit from economies of scale which means that the educational market will also benefit from even cheaper devices than previously when the shortage eventually ends.