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Questions for Eben Upton to answer at Maker Faire?

fustini

Got questions for Eben Upton of the Raspberry Pi Foundation?  He will be answering them at Maker Faire Bay Area this weekend.

 

Tweet at @element14 with #AskEben or post your question here.

 

 

Cheers,

Drew

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

     

  • in reply to fustini

    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.

  • in reply to morgaine

    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. image

     

     

    Morgaine.

  • in reply to 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.

  • in reply to fustini

    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. image

     

     

    Morgaine.

  • in reply to fustini

    FYI - Eben's demo from Maker Faire is now online and there is Q&A at the end:

     

     

    Also, this was a cool moment when he gave young maker Joey Hudy a Pi:

     

  • in reply to fustini

    Thanks Drew, great videos. image

     

    Yeah, I watched the section at 21mins a second time, and it's really depressing.  Broadcom just doesn't care twopence about the open community, not even when they suddenly find themselves in the limelight heading a programme designed for open education.  Pitiful.

     

    If you look at the ridiculous  "justifications" they give at http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=6188 , it really highlights how they have absolutely no logical ground to stand on for keeping the APIs closed.

     

    It summarizes pretty clearly as "We won't open because we don't do that, so go away."  I don't expect any movement whatsoever from them, as Broadcom has always had that reputation for being unfriendly to the open source community.