[nyanpasu64]

I'm still upset that Raspberry Pi was focused on ensuring institutional customers (like these electric scooters) could order thousands of Pis, while leaving hobbyists trying to order single-digit quantities scrambling through years-long waiting lists and listings which get snapped up in seconds (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_aL9V0JsQQ&t=564s).

[post-it]

I'd be shocked if there's a company in the world who would prioritize Joe Shmoe wanting to buy 1 widget over BigCorp wanting to buy 10 000. It's economics of scale.

[paulgb]

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a registered charity to promote computer science education, so if any company were to prioritize Joe Shmoe it would be them.

[calgarymicro]

The Foundation's charitable activities involve funding educational programs for children.[0] Those educational programs are funded via the profits made from selling Raspberry Pis[1], so their charitable goals are aided by selling as many Pis as possible; that's helped by ensuring that reliable corporate customers that place orders in the thousands are never left high and dry.

[0]https://www.raspberrypi.com/about/

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi

[s3p]

The pis are getting sold either way. See op's comment about publicly available pis getting snatched in seconds? RBP doesn't need a deal with a large corporation to sell off their inventory.

[calgarymicro]

Presumably the Foundation sees a future (which is pretty close at hand, if the Foundation is to be believed) where there is no longer a shortage, at which point they would like to continue having industrial customers (which you won't have if you can't guarantee supply). Eben Upton has repeatedly spoken of his desire not to leave companies whose business depends on supply of Pis without stock, thereby endangering their survival.

It's also worth noting that the rapid selling out of hobbyist inventory happens in part because much of the supply is earmarked for industrial customers; we don't actually know if that would still happen if all Pis were sold directly to hobbyists.

[mytailorisrich]

The foundation is a small part. The Pis are built and sold by a commercial company that even advertises Pis for industry use: https://www.raspberrypi.com/for-industry/

[bmurphy1976]

I've moved on to esp32s and Intel nucs. I'm so angry about the stock issues the last two years they may very well have lost me permanently and I'm definitely going to be paying this forward whenever I talk tech to somebody interested in using raspberry pis.

I'm still looking for 3 pi zero 2s and trying to be fiscally responsible and not get scalped or further contributing to this mess but wow it's been way too long and it's maddening.

I'm not a company, but I've spent a ton of money on pis (including professionally). I was a big champion and supporter convincing everyone I knew to use them for their projects. Now I'm just mad and looking for any alternative I can find. I know I'm not the only one. How can this not have negative long term consequences??

I know they are just a business at the end of the day but I was all in for years. Rational or not I feel completely betrayed.

[xyzelement]

A bit of a first hand experience - my father in law runs a small manufacturing firm in the US. In the past few years they've designed a new hardware item with a Pi at the core.

When the supply issues happened, they were concerned about not being able to manufacture the devices. That's a multi million dollar investment at stake not to mention the employees and customers that would be impacted. Luckily they figure out a supply.

Compared to that, my as a hobbyist having to be patient to get another pi is completely incosequential.

[skelpmargyar]

If they have a multi million dollar investment at stake and they're not able to pivot to any of the other many SBCs out there then they might just be incompetent. The Pi has nothing particularly special about other than it's well documented and cheap.

[xyzelement]

I mean obviously yes you can redesign and retool manufacturing if you really need to but it's not ideal and best to avoid.

Between "retool" and "hobbyist wait" one seems worse.

You may remember car manufacturers had to shut down assembly lines due to chip shortages in the last few years even for non-critical chips. Redesigning around missing components is non trivial though obviously doable

[HeyLaughingBoy]

> it's well documented and cheap

And in one sentence you've nailed its value proposition perfectly. That's what is so special about it.

[internetter]

> In the past few years they've designed a new hardware item with a Pi at the core.

I think the argument is that there shouldn't be a Pi at the core

[xyzelement]

It seems to be a weird argument to make since the Raspberry Pi foundation itself is positioning PIs as advantageous for industrial use.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/for-industry/powered-by/

[ugh123]

DITTO.