5 ms·

Community resources? The Raspberry Pi has almost zero hardware documentation, a closed black box controlled by a massive binary blob and an absolutely despotic

Community resources? The Raspberry Pi has almost zero hardware documentation, a closed black box controlled by a massive binary blob and an absolutely despotic PR disaster named Liz Upton who actively insults and derides developers and others in the RPi community. Here's a fun excerpt from http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2221 http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2221 : Liz: ... keep trying to rustle up some outrage if it gives you a kick; I’d recommend finding something else to do soon, though. We don’t want you developing an ulcer. Developer: Am I allowed to be outraged by the fact that it’s not really open, since I see no mention of actual documentation for the hardware? Or by this: http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/ http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/ ? Can I get outraged by that? Liz: Well you /could/, but you wouldn’t half look silly. Nice going, Liz. That's right, anyone who actually wants to make full utilization of the hardware they paid for is 'silly' and we're only rustling up outrage for 'kicks' when you post a press release announcing how open source you really aren't. Here, have a nine page thread of people complaining they were banned under weak, insane excuses like 'concern trolling' because they dared to mention things like 'your supplier isn't sending me anything' and 'My SD card gets corrupted when I unplug the device sometimes': https://www.element14.com/community/thread/20081 https://www.element14.com/community/thread/20081 It's got massive hype since it's a $35 Beagleboard, but otherwise it's bringing nothing new to the table that hasn't been done by others and increasingly done better by other devices. The remainder of the situation seems to be a collection of people more interested in their awards, hype and press releases than their actual users and developers on their forums. Frankly, there's quite a few ARM SoC boards out there with GPIO pins and all the bells and whistles of the Pi, many of them have even beefier hardware. None of them have this horrible baggage and all of them will run the same software for the most part. So that's great that many people are going to target this device, but it's hardly an 'exclusive port' to the RPi. The real bet to back is Linux on ARM. Personally, this board gets me much more hot than the RPi and prices are only going to come down on similar future boards: http://www.arndaleboard.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page http://www.arndaleboard.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

iuguy 14y ago
Hmmmm... That's a bit shady, especially charging for MPEG-2 support and other codecs. Not quite sure what they're getting at there.
- neverm0re 14y ago
  It's pretty simple. The RPi is an advertising campaign for Broadcom's VideoCore IV processor, which is part of why the RPi is so cheap. Broadcom is uncomfortable with the reality that software is eating hardware, so they've decided to artificially bolster the value of their hardware by selling it back to you incrementally with their own buggy software. Until they lose interest in maintaining it, of course.
- noob1 14y ago
  So paying for a mpeg-2 licenses is shady? wtf?
- jws 14y ago
  Why shouldn't the people tha want to use the MPEG-2 patents pay the license fees? I don't play MPEG-2 on any of my RPis and am fine not paying them for those those that want to use that format.
  - neverm0re 14y ago
    Except that totally overlooks the fact there are parts of the world where they could implement their own MPEG-2 decoder legally as they do not have software patents. Instead, because of this blob system without documentation they're forced to pay for it. How is this in any way not contrary to goals of education?
    - jws 14y ago
      "Perfect" will be great. Here in 2012 we don't have good performing GPUs with open documentation available for integration. This is what we can have now. It sucks a bit. I don't see it changing anytime soon. That's most of the reason I supported Parallela. That promises to be open, it probably won't be as much power as a nice GPU, but I want to compute with that hardware, and more problems will fit better. Plus I won't get trapped in some flawed API that has weird black boxes bugs and unpredictable performance issues.
subsystem 14y ago
"Linux on ARM" has already been won by Android. That's why many ARM SoCs comes with closed Android drivers.
- zobzu 14y ago
  That argument makes no sense. ARM chips come with closed source android drivers because those bring money. That's that. If you think GNU/Linux "victory" would be about making money, you'd be sorely mistaking (or else, you can go the ubuntu way and beg for donations, include proprietary apps, track users, and wonder where you failed)
  - subsystem 14y ago
    Who said anything about money? GNU/Linux is about freedom. In most of these new devices you can't run GNU/Linux without a lot of work, because there are no driver, leaving you with no freedom.
neurotech1 14y ago
Having met one of the key RPi developers, I think the issue of "open design" was a trade-off. They could get a high performance SoC with "closed BLOBs" at a cheap price, and still achieve the the educational goals of the board.
- neverm0re 14y ago
  What part of their educational goals involve publicly antagonizing their users? The behavior of their PR and their forum moderators does not resemble any open academic environment I've ever seen. It does, however, resemble Tumblr.
  - beagle3 14y ago
    The educational goal of actually getting a usable product out? Your snide remarks about them being a PR stunt for broadcom do not change the facts that they are working with very little resources, and have actually delivered on what they have promised (and then some), with a delay that's comparable to many for-profit vendors. And further - you may dislike Liz' handling of things. SO DON'T BE THEIR USER!. Linus Torvalds is about a hundred times worse to his users and fellow developers on public mailing lists. And you know what? He's gotten more and better stuff done thanks to that, compared to any polite project manager I've ever known. Liz/RPiFoundation (and Linus) may antagonize people here and there - but I suspect that thanks to how they handle things, I think the gain (in users that can afford or find the product useful) to pain (antagonized user/developer) is well above 1,000:1 (perhaps even 100,000:1) which makes it totally justified - in fact, the preferred course of action. edit: better wording.
  - ersii 14y ago
    In my opinion, it looks exactly like the academic environment. I don't see many pictures on the Raspberry Pi Foundations pages - which Tumblr seems to be 99% made out of.
guiambros 14y ago
Don't want to speak on behalf of the R-Pi foundation, but you're taking things out of context. This whole thread was disgusting, I wanted to puke reading such douchy comments - from both sides. Example: Developer: Remember who you are talking to here, and i am currently talking to the developer of the freedreno driver, and the guy REing the tegra, and we are all shaking our heads in disgust over the brashness of this announcement. Liz: > Remember who you are talking to here Seriously? Developer: Definitely... Google me. Yes, R-Pi folks should have clarified that while opening the userland code was definitely a good move (which was the topic of the blog post btw), the videocore blob was still closed - and probably will never be open-sourced. And while this is fine for most people, some folks will still be frustrated - and they can always vote with their time and money. It'd be much more effective than writing self-aggrandizing comments, regardless their individual achievements. Let's face it, it's a design trade-off, not the foundation's choice. You know, Broadcom-trade secrets-yadda yadda. May change one day, but I wouldn't bet on it. HN, as usual, had way more civilized comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692401 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692401
- neverm0re 14y ago
  We're still talking about a woman who posted the following piece to the foundation's frontpage for lulz: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1901 http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1901 Yes, the guy was out there -- but does waving chat logs like this around for people to gawk at really belong on the front page of a supposedly educational foundation's website? It sure did get linked around, so it's certainly advertising... but by no means is it educational and it's still very much the general antagonistic and lulzy behavior I've come to expect from these people and how they choose to run their community and maintain their web presence. At the end of the day, the RPi only feels 'educational' flavored for marketing for me. It may not for you, that's cool too. People are going to do educational things with the RPi, but they're going to do it in spite of how the RPi Foundation are running things since now the meme of this board being 'educational' has been cemented. ... Though given they're already talking about on their own blog[1] how the board may not be around in a few years, I suspect we'll have another 'educational' board (with a new Broadcom chip, natch) to purchase for cheap. It'll be just as revolutionary as the others on the market at the time, I'm sure. [1]: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2519 http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2519

iuguy 14y ago

Hmmmm... That's a bit shady, especially charging for MPEG-2 support and other codecs. Not quite sure what they're getting at there.

neverm0re 14y ago
It's pretty simple. The RPi is an advertising campaign for Broadcom's VideoCore IV processor, which is part of why the RPi is so cheap. Broadcom is uncomfortable with the reality that software is eating hardware, so they've decided to artificially bolster the value of their hardware by selling it back to you incrementally with their own buggy software. Until they lose interest in maintaining it, of course.
noob1 14y ago
So paying for a mpeg-2 licenses is shady? wtf?
jws 14y ago
Why shouldn't the people tha want to use the MPEG-2 patents pay the license fees? I don't play MPEG-2 on any of my RPis and am fine not paying them for those those that want to use that format.
- neverm0re 14y ago
  Except that totally overlooks the fact there are parts of the world where they could implement their own MPEG-2 decoder legally as they do not have software patents. Instead, because of this blob system without documentation they're forced to pay for it. How is this in any way not contrary to goals of education?
  - jws 14y ago
    "Perfect" will be great. Here in 2012 we don't have good performing GPUs with open documentation available for integration. This is what we can have now. It sucks a bit. I don't see it changing anytime soon. That's most of the reason I supported Parallela. That promises to be open, it probably won't be as much power as a nice GPU, but I want to compute with that hardware, and more problems will fit better. Plus I won't get trapped in some flawed API that has weird black boxes bugs and unpredictable performance issues.

subsystem 14y ago

"Linux on ARM" has already been won by Android. That's why many ARM SoCs comes with closed Android drivers.

zobzu 14y ago
That argument makes no sense. ARM chips come with closed source android drivers because those bring money. That's that. If you think GNU/Linux "victory" would be about making money, you'd be sorely mistaking (or else, you can go the ubuntu way and beg for donations, include proprietary apps, track users, and wonder where you failed)
- subsystem 14y ago
  Who said anything about money? GNU/Linux is about freedom. In most of these new devices you can't run GNU/Linux without a lot of work, because there are no driver, leaving you with no freedom.

neurotech1 14y ago

Having met one of the key RPi developers, I think the issue of "open design" was a trade-off. They could get a high performance SoC with "closed BLOBs" at a cheap price, and still achieve the the educational goals of the board.

neverm0re 14y ago
What part of their educational goals involve publicly antagonizing their users? The behavior of their PR and their forum moderators does not resemble any open academic environment I've ever seen. It does, however, resemble Tumblr.
- beagle3 14y ago
  The educational goal of actually getting a usable product out? Your snide remarks about them being a PR stunt for broadcom do not change the facts that they are working with very little resources, and have actually delivered on what they have promised (and then some), with a delay that's comparable to many for-profit vendors. And further - you may dislike Liz' handling of things. SO DON'T BE THEIR USER!. Linus Torvalds is about a hundred times worse to his users and fellow developers on public mailing lists. And you know what? He's gotten more and better stuff done thanks to that, compared to any polite project manager I've ever known. Liz/RPiFoundation (and Linus) may antagonize people here and there - but I suspect that thanks to how they handle things, I think the gain (in users that can afford or find the product useful) to pain (antagonized user/developer) is well above 1,000:1 (perhaps even 100,000:1) which makes it totally justified - in fact, the preferred course of action. edit: better wording.
- ersii 14y ago
  In my opinion, it looks exactly like the academic environment. I don't see many pictures on the Raspberry Pi Foundations pages - which Tumblr seems to be 99% made out of.

guiambros 14y ago

Don't want to speak on behalf of the R-Pi foundation, but you're taking things out of context. This whole thread was disgusting, I wanted to puke reading such douchy comments - from both sides. Example: Developer: Remember who you are talking to here, and i am currently talking to the developer of the freedreno driver, and the guy REing the tegra, and we are all shaking our heads in disgust over the brashness of this announcement. Liz: > Remember who you are talking to here Seriously? Developer: Definitely... Google me. Yes, R-Pi folks should have clarified that while opening the userland code was definitely a good move (which was the topic of the blog post btw), the videocore blob was still closed - and probably will never be open-sourced. And while this is fine for most people, some folks will still be frustrated - and they can always vote with their time and money. It'd be much more effective than writing self-aggrandizing comments, regardless their individual achievements. Let's face it, it's a design trade-off, not the foundation's choice. You know, Broadcom-trade secrets-yadda yadda. May change one day, but I wouldn't bet on it. HN, as usual, had way more civilized comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692401 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692401

neverm0re 14y ago
We're still talking about a woman who posted the following piece to the foundation's frontpage for lulz: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1901 http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1901 Yes, the guy was out there -- but does waving chat logs like this around for people to gawk at really belong on the front page of a supposedly educational foundation's website? It sure did get linked around, so it's certainly advertising... but by no means is it educational and it's still very much the general antagonistic and lulzy behavior I've come to expect from these people and how they choose to run their community and maintain their web presence. At the end of the day, the RPi only feels 'educational' flavored for marketing for me. It may not for you, that's cool too. People are going to do educational things with the RPi, but they're going to do it in spite of how the RPi Foundation are running things since now the meme of this board being 'educational' has been cemented. ... Though given they're already talking about on their own blog[1] how the board may not be around in a few years, I suspect we'll have another 'educational' board (with a new Broadcom chip, natch) to purchase for cheap. It'll be just as revolutionary as the others on the market at the time, I'm sure. [1]: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2519 http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2519