[cushychicken]

Raspberry Pi is a corporate endeavor as well. They also have employees, and a payroll to maintain.

Seems a bit harsh to blame them for selling their products to the customers who are most able to pay for them, which enables them to stay in business. (Whatever quantity Vodafone is buying is DEFINITELY more than any hobbyist is able to pay.)

[mattmanser]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17190918

You're very wrong, that was not what it was for.

Dr Upton says that will help the project grow much more quickly than previously thought.

"We didn't realise how successful this was going to be," he said.

"This means we can scale to volume. Now we can concentrate on teaching people to program."

What a lie that turned out to be!

[cushychicken]

And yet the annals of history are littered with open source education efforts that failed, because they weren’t able to figure out a revenue model that was sustainable to their creators.

Maybe this thread is just a lightning rod for a bunch of OSHW anger but there’s compounding good that comes from a huge customer like Vodafone buying a shitload of Pis.

The major thing I can think of is higher volume for the Pi foundation, which means more negotiating power with their chip suppliers or price breaks at a certain ordering volume.

Might mean you don’t get any Pis now.

Also might mean they drop the per unit cost by $5-10 in a year.

Not that I expect any of these facts to make you feel any less angry or betrayed or whatever, but they’re net goods for the Pi Foundation, and the OSHW community if they do indeed come to pass.

[monocasa]

> The major thing I can think of is higher volume for the Pi foundation, which means more negotiating power with their chip suppliers or price breaks at a certain ordering volume.

Normally you'd be right. But apparently (the unsubstantiated rumor is that) Broadcom is pissed that RPi built a for profit company on top of the IP licenses Broadcom thought they were donating to a nonprofit and is stone walling RPi wrt getting larger orders than previously negotiated or working with them on an RPi5 and that's the major issue with the continuing stocking issues.

[cushychicken]

That wouldn’t surprise from Broadcom, they’re some petty MFers to work with in my experience lol.

Seems like they’re cutting off their nose to spite their faces at this kind of volume, though.

[noncoml]

> Raspberry Pi is a corporate endeavor as well. They also have employees, and a payroll to maintain.

They would have sold out either way. What does payroll have to do with who they prioritize to sell to?

[dymk]

It's easier and less risky to sell in-bulk to another business on a contract than it does to sell retail

[cushychicken]

Another good point. Not to mention probably a more profitable end venture for the Pi Foundation. Fewer pounds of flesh doled out to retailers and middlemen.

[irjustin]

> Whatever quantity Vodafone is buying is DEFINITELY more than any hobbyist is able to pay.

You're arguing for the parent comment with this.

The "foundation" was intentioned as for hobbyists and people who wanted to learn while being affordable that's how it was sold to the general public. Chasing a higher payer will always lock out "affordable".

An analogy would be healthcare. Capitalism and affordable+for-many are at direct odds.

[cushychicken]

> Chasing a higher payer will always lock out "affordable".

This reveals a misunderstanding of the economics of both chipset vendors and electronics manufacturing.

The more Pis that the foundation can make at one time, the cheaper their unit costs can be, by encouraging competition from suppliers and getting price breaks from chipset vendors.

Large customers like Vodafone buying 10k or 100k is a huge advancement towards that goal.

In the short term? Yeah, maybe some shortages of SBCs.

In the long term, they’ll probably be able to build more Pis at higher quantities and cheaper unit prices.

[irjustin]

> In the long term, they’ll probably be able to build more Pis at higher quantities and cheaper unit prices.

My retort is - then you misunderstand the gap between Android and iPhone. MediaTek+Qualcomm vs Apple [0]

It's too simplistic to think just because you produce more you'll make more money. There's an absolute maximum in the pricing-volume curves. Even if you have to pay more for the chips, if you can simply charge more you'll make money hand over fist. That's what this thread is saying that the RPi foundation "sold out".

The last sentence is incredibly hard to achieve, but if your brand is a household name like iPhone or R.Pi then you can start jacking up the price and as long as you have correctly identified the price insensitive (or less sensitive anyway) you price to the max of the particular group.

[0] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-ap-ma...

[cushychicken]

Not every brand makes the decision to raise prices in the face of lowering backend costs, however.

I don't have enough info on historical pricing of RPis to say, but it certainly seems to benefit their stated mission of education (and unstated one of industrial SBC supplier) to have lower per-unit pricing at retail or wholesale.

Though I get the feeling I may be arguing in the face of a bunch of folks who just want to mob the Foundation for taking a course they don't personally agree with.

[WithinReason]

Many capitalist countries have affordable healthcare.