[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.