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I find it confounding how 'cozy' RPi's relationship is with the open-source community given how little of their project is open-source. But I infer that open-so

I find it confounding how 'cozy' RPi's relationship is with the open-source community given how little of their project is open-source. But I infer that open-source hardware and low-level software is much less important, interesting, and malleable than the OS-and-above software.

deleted 2y ago
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dgroshev 2y ago
One often under-appreciated aspect is that they have a tiny set of SKUs, which means opensource contributions/docs/articles/hype are all concentrated on those few SKUs. It's especially true for RP2040, their competitors have massive lineups that help to right-size the MCU, but this also means that any given SKU has less opensource support.
- johnwalkr 2y ago
  This is definitely true, especially when rpi is probably more popular than all other SBCs combined. I always feel burned about 2 years after buying anything but beaglebone, rpi or Jetson nano and can't find support. With rpi you can always find an up to date OS image (for the boards that need an OS). If you use complex devices like cameras, you can probably find recent drivers and readme files for rpi. For other SBCs you will probably end up trying to adapt documentation for rpi and getting stuck because your OS is using a weird version of libc, or something like that.
talldayo 2y ago
Cheap, open or interesting. If your product is at least two of those things, you should be prepared for the Open Source community to hack it.
- bloggie 2y ago
  Well put. And I agree. I draw similarities between RPi and OtherOS on the PS3. Sony permitted Linux on their consoles and in exchange the hardware was locked. PS3 was not hacked until they removed the OtherOS feature and was the last console of that generation to be hacked. RPi is not Sony and would (probably, hopefully) not start limiting user OS choice, but the moment that happens, it will be completely and thoroughly hacked as there would be an incentive to do so.
SR2Z 2y ago
I hope that OSS hardware gets as cheap as these tiny proprietary chips in the future, but I think it'll take a while.
bsder 2y ago
> But I infer that open-source hardware and low-level software is much less important, interesting, and malleable than the OS-and-above software. Nope. It was all about the subsidy. Because the RPi was subsidized, competitors like the Beaglebone series couldn't achieve a critical mass since they were always being undercut. This set up a decade+ of mindshare. And then the RPi foundation knifed everbody in the shortage by shunting all the RPis to commercial companies like FormLabs. Even now that low-end x86 machines are cheaper than the RPi's, everybody still sings the praises of the RPi's. Marketing always wins.
- 15155 2y ago
  That "low-end" x86 machine still has an Intel/AMD chipset in addition to the processor, possibly a BIOS/UEFI chip from yet another vendor - they're substantially more difficult from a hardware standpoint to get going than any ARM MPU. Debug tools are inferior, as well. ARM MPUs became popular because they are actually easy to deploy.
- throw46365 2y ago
  > And then the RPi foundation knifed everbody in the shortage by shunting all the RPis to commercial companies like FormLabs. The Foundation did no such thing because it doesn’t manufacture the boards and it’s not their decision. The Trading company manufactures the boards, and it chose not to destroy its commercial contracts (all of which experienced limited stock too, particularly of CM4s, even though they were prioritising CM4s), which kept the lights on. They were already selling dramatically more units into commercial channels (Citrix for example) than to hobbyists. The two entities also introduced the Raspberry Pi Pico and Pico W in the pandemic era, which were wildly popular and kept their educational goals on track, as well as giving suppliers like Pimoroni and Adafruit something to design absolutely amazing products around, with a microcontroller that wasn’t supply-constrained. IMO they more than made the case that most people don’t need a whole linux box to run a physical computing project. I don’t get the whining. Do the little Intel boxes work for you? If so, use them and leave Raspberry Pi in the dust; there’s more than one way to add GPIO, SPI, I2C and PIO to your projects. (Side note: the Beagleboard is a Texas Instruments product, is it not? I am not convinced its origins are all that different to the Pi, in that regard. If TI couldn’t compete on price and marketing, that is on TI, surely)
mkj 2y ago
Their efforts keeping up to date with current Linux kernels is better than most boards of that nature. That deserves some open source credit.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dgroshev 2y ago

One often under-appreciated aspect is that they have a tiny set of SKUs, which means opensource contributions/docs/articles/hype are all concentrated on those few SKUs. It's especially true for RP2040, their competitors have massive lineups that help to right-size the MCU, but this also means that any given SKU has less opensource support.

johnwalkr 2y ago
This is definitely true, especially when rpi is probably more popular than all other SBCs combined. I always feel burned about 2 years after buying anything but beaglebone, rpi or Jetson nano and can't find support. With rpi you can always find an up to date OS image (for the boards that need an OS). If you use complex devices like cameras, you can probably find recent drivers and readme files for rpi. For other SBCs you will probably end up trying to adapt documentation for rpi and getting stuck because your OS is using a weird version of libc, or something like that.

talldayo 2y ago

Cheap, open or interesting. If your product is at least two of those things, you should be prepared for the Open Source community to hack it.

bloggie 2y ago
Well put. And I agree. I draw similarities between RPi and OtherOS on the PS3. Sony permitted Linux on their consoles and in exchange the hardware was locked. PS3 was not hacked until they removed the OtherOS feature and was the last console of that generation to be hacked. RPi is not Sony and would (probably, hopefully) not start limiting user OS choice, but the moment that happens, it will be completely and thoroughly hacked as there would be an incentive to do so.

SR2Z 2y ago

I hope that OSS hardware gets as cheap as these tiny proprietary chips in the future, but I think it'll take a while.

bsder 2y ago

> But I infer that open-source hardware and low-level software is much less important, interesting, and malleable than the OS-and-above software. Nope. It was all about the subsidy. Because the RPi was subsidized, competitors like the Beaglebone series couldn't achieve a critical mass since they were always being undercut. This set up a decade+ of mindshare. And then the RPi foundation knifed everbody in the shortage by shunting all the RPis to commercial companies like FormLabs. Even now that low-end x86 machines are cheaper than the RPi's, everybody still sings the praises of the RPi's. Marketing always wins.

15155 2y ago
That "low-end" x86 machine still has an Intel/AMD chipset in addition to the processor, possibly a BIOS/UEFI chip from yet another vendor - they're substantially more difficult from a hardware standpoint to get going than any ARM MPU. Debug tools are inferior, as well. ARM MPUs became popular because they are actually easy to deploy.
throw46365 2y ago
> And then the RPi foundation knifed everbody in the shortage by shunting all the RPis to commercial companies like FormLabs. The Foundation did no such thing because it doesn’t manufacture the boards and it’s not their decision. The Trading company manufactures the boards, and it chose not to destroy its commercial contracts (all of which experienced limited stock too, particularly of CM4s, even though they were prioritising CM4s), which kept the lights on. They were already selling dramatically more units into commercial channels (Citrix for example) than to hobbyists. The two entities also introduced the Raspberry Pi Pico and Pico W in the pandemic era, which were wildly popular and kept their educational goals on track, as well as giving suppliers like Pimoroni and Adafruit something to design absolutely amazing products around, with a microcontroller that wasn’t supply-constrained. IMO they more than made the case that most people don’t need a whole linux box to run a physical computing project. I don’t get the whining. Do the little Intel boxes work for you? If so, use them and leave Raspberry Pi in the dust; there’s more than one way to add GPIO, SPI, I2C and PIO to your projects. (Side note: the Beagleboard is a Texas Instruments product, is it not? I am not convinced its origins are all that different to the Pi, in that regard. If TI couldn’t compete on price and marketing, that is on TI, surely)

mkj 2y ago

Their efforts keeping up to date with current Linux kernels is better than most boards of that nature. That deserves some open source credit.