Questions for Eben Upton to answer at Maker Faire?

fyi - video answers from Eben filmed at Maker Faire now posted:

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RE: Questions for Eben Upton to answer at Maker Faire?

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Watching this video gave me an uneasy feeling when Eben mentioned the Gert board and the camera board.  The Pi has such good educational goals, yet when it comes to add-ons, the intent seems to be to capitalize on the closed market that's being created, rather than working towards open standards and interoperability.

Watching this video gave me an uneasy feeling when Eben mentioned the Gert board and the camera board.  The Pi has such good educational goals, yet when it comes to add-ons, the intent seems to be to capitalize on the closed market that's being created, rather than working towards open standards and interoperability.

I also get an uneasy feeling every time I hear Eben answer the "open hardware?" question with a vague hint that Broadcom might one day open the SoC documentation, but that until then opening the hardware further would be pointless.

Well the score is not in any doubt there.  Here's the score card:

• Broadcom is legendary in the way it keeps its proprietary info to itself.
• This SoC is part of a current and very highly selling product, the Roku 2.
• Maintaining a monopoly on the Pi suits Broadcom extremely well.
• Eben works for Broadcom, and undoubtedly does what is best for them.

Can anyone see how the above 4-nil leads in the direction of open hardware?

No, I thought not.

Morgaine.

I'm encouraged that the intention seems to be to release all the design files in the future, but until that happens, I will have to regard it as not an Open Source Hardware project.  In the meantime, the Pi is still doing an excellent job at promoting Open Source software like Linux.  I'm very excited that there will be so many people being introduced to Linux for the first time.

I know the primary goal of the Pi design was price point, so the decisions aren't going to please everyone.  I think the BeagleBone fulfills my desire much better for Open Source Hardware meets Open Source software.  In fact, after seeing the excellent booth at Maker Faire, I ordered one yesterday.  I also look forward to getting a OLinuXuino in the future.  I'll give the RPi Foundation the benefit of the doubt and time to grow into being more Open Source, but it's good to know there are other options out there.

Drew Fustini wrote:

 

I think the BeagleBone fulfills my desire much better for Open Source Hardware meets Open Source software.  In fact, after seeing the excellent booth at Maker Faire, I ordered one yesterday.

As you can probably infer from my BeagleBone-related post -- http://www.element14.com/community/thread/18382?tstart=0 -- I agree with you.

Morgaine.