Given that most educational uses of the Pi won't involved developing things at such a low level as to require detailed specs of the processor and that the OS's for the Pi are all freely available that article would probably be better titled "Why the Pi is unsuitable for educating hardware engineers about ARM."
The $25 price point is more important to the educational use (K-12) then any specs put out about the hardware. I don't need to know any of that to learn Python for instance.
Yes, and the Raspberry Pi is not designed for them. There is no reason it should cater to everyone, it's designed for those who aren't experienced with programming, hacking and reverse engineering so they can start on their learning experience without a large financial barrier to entry.
You're missing my point, which is that high school students are capable of this kind of thing, and it would be perfectly possible to push yet more of them along that route given the right environment and attitude.
Well that's kinda harsh. It's a hardware platform, it makes sense for them to be happy to get more choices as they go. I don't care about Mathematica on the Pi, but someone might be interested, why not give them the choice? :-)
Open source (and linux fragmentation for example) is all about choices right?
I don't understand your point. I am a realist and I think there is a value in using both open and closed source tools. It is like giving out Matlab for free and you think this is a bad thing? I am not saying don't use octave or numpy scipy, but honestly students and educators can careless about whether the tool they are using is open or closed. The number 1 thing about education is not about the tool being open or closed source, it's whether the tool is usable. Mathematica is a very well-known software and many Math teachers have used it before.
Seriously, they are not endorsing non-open-soruce. They are graceful that there is one additional tool available to educators. Your "debian repository" is a marketplace. I don't see why education has to be run with open source tools. Why? Do we all have to use Open Office instead of MS Office suite? I actually like MS suite better but I just don't want to purchase a license for my Mac so I keep Open Office. I like fusion over virtualbox. There is nothing wrong with anyone using closed source in education. Please stop thinking that because Raspberry Pi runs on open source operating system it has to include open source software from start to end. The end goal is to be able to afford cheap hardware and bundle a bunch of software for classroom use.
The $25 price point is more important to the educational use (K-12) then any specs put out about the hardware. I don't need to know any of that to learn Python for instance.