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by greenyoda 3939 days ago
Not sure why these people are spending so much money to develop their own hardware (40% of total cost) when this software (mail server, PGP) can be run on many cheap, off-the-shelf systems, like Raspberry Pi.
4 comments

Mainly because it cannot be trusted enough for this kind of application. It is not Open Hardware. The processor used is very closed, even the data-sheet is not accessible to the public. (It's very problematic for a device like Own-Mailbox very sensitive regarding politic.) The Raspberry Pi is provided with non-free software and the hardware needs non-free driver to work. (Also problematic.)

Raspberry Pi is bigger and less energy efficient.

On top of that, we don't use it for prices reasons, people have already tried to sell all-in-the-box devices based on Raspberry Pi and the end up being expensive.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1547898916/own-mailbox-...

I guess Raspberry Pi would be actually more expensive than this. Also, I think not having to set up this tech stack myself alone is worth more than 30 Euro...
I'm not affiliated with the project, but from what I gather from the description, the reason is that they want to have completely open hardware.
Because Rpi is not an open hardware :-/