Per-seat codec licensing for Raspberry Pi

And separate from the matters of principle, a note about the matters of cost.

The Pi Model B was launched for $35, its BOM cost being that or less for a production run of 10-30k units.  There are now allegedly more than 350,000 units in the field.  With the rise in production volumes, BOM costs drop like a downwardly mobile elephant, and can now be reasonably expected to be far below their original figures.

Given that there is now a substantial (and probably quite large) headroom between BOM cost and market price, why is the cost of codec licensing not being covered as a built-in cost?  The license prices of  £2.40 and £1.20 for MPEG-2 and VC-1 are presumably way below the expected cost-price headroom, so this balkanization of Pi users into codec haves and have-nots seems entirely unnecessary.

Morgaine.

I actually see this as positive thing and disagree with the comment "... Not only does it inflate the effective cost of Pi by some additional amount,". It only increases the cost of the Pi for those that want native support for these decoders and not the base cost of the Pi for those who do not want it e.g. education. Also its only £2.40, its less than the cost of a pint of beer and if the Pi dies and I have to but another one, hey its only £2.40, less than the cost of a pint of beer .... thats something I can accept.

The only slightly annoying thing out of this is that Liz has closed one of the most interesting threads on the Pi forums, the mpeg2 thread. It would have probably died anyway but I don't see any need to close it as what those guys were doing was really interesting to a bystander like me.

Rob

welshblob wrote:

 

It only increases the cost of the Pi for those that want native support for these decoders and not the base cost of the Pi for those who do not want it e.g. education.

While that is certainly true because the extra cost is purely optional (as I clearly noted above), it doesn't recognize a few issues:

• Some schools will inevitably purchase the licenses to have "a fully working Pi".
• The schools that purchase only a few licenses will pay the price of platform divergence.
• The schools that don't purchase licenses on principle will not be able to run all Pi software.
• The extra amount would not be visible at all if it had been covered in the Pi BOM cost.

In other words, this does not appear to have been the most sensible course of action at all.

Morgaine.

OK you stated it was optional in one sentence then condradicted that by saying that the effective cost of the Pi had increased! Make your mind up!

In my opinion schools won't care about mpeg2 licenses. I assume most will be focussed on basic programming on the Pi and any video processing is likely to be with h264 especially as the encoder is now also available and will be used with the soon to be released camera module. h264 appears to be the future codec given its wide adoption which I expect is partly due to its low licensing cost.

You do seem to be tilting at windmills here.

Rob

I'm pretty philosophical about this. They've managed to deliver MPEG-2 handling to the people who bought the board for media duties - and without making them shell out for the camera module (which was to act as a dongle). They've also managed to convince MPEG LA that they have a robust C/R mechanism. Fair play. I hate C/R because it's a fact of life here (as in "Jesus, I paid a fortune for this software, what if I go to reauthorise after changing a motherboard and find the company has gone bust and there's no C/R server..."). Such is life in the world of "there's no freeware option".

No educational establishment explicitly needs MPEG-2 support. If the I.T. guy buys it just "because it's there" then that probably speaks volumes about the quality of training that those poor kids are going to get...

I'm happy to cut the Foundation a break on this one.

Here's a little contribution to the Foundation's very worthwhile educational goals, --- a hypothetical press/blog release that in my view would fall under the banner of "Doing the right thing":

[Hypothetical, please note]

"Wonderful news for the Pi community!

We have been advised by our manufacturing partners that there is now sufficient headroom between cost of volume manufacture and net market price that the MPEG-2 and VC-1 licenses can be absorbed as a product cost.  Therefore we are withdrawing our previously announced optional license charges (contact us for refunds).

Enjoy your new, no-extra-cost Pi functionality!  And say nice things to our manufacturing partners!"

Well one can dream.

Morgaine.

Jonathan Garrish wrote:

 

"and without making them shell out for the camera module (which was to act as a dongle)."

That's good news for a change!  Dongles would have balkanized the Pi as a common platform even further.  But it's not all positive --- notice that the camera module would have been portable to another Pi board, whereas these licences cannot be moved between Pi boards.

welshblob wrote:

 

OK you stated it was optional in one sentence then condradicted that by saying that the effective cost of the Pi had increased! Make your mind up!

I think this is just a slight misreading of the appropriate paragraph (paragraph 2), as there's nothing sinister or incorrect there.  It's just a matter of context and parsing.  I hope this explanation helps.

Paragraph 2 was about "per-seat licensing" and "not portable from Pi to Pi".  The phrase "inflate the effective cost of Pi" lay between the previous two phrases, and so it should have been clear that this price rise refers exclusively to the extra non-portable cost per seat.  After all, that was the point of the post, it's in the title.  It can only refer to those Pi with the non-portable element, not to any others.

I'll try to be clearer next time.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

Jonathan Garrish wrote:

 

"and without making them shell out for the camera module (which was to act as a dongle)."

 

That's good news for a change!  Dongles would have balkanized the Pi as a common platform even further.  But it's not all positive --- notice that the camera module would have been portable to another Pi board, whereas these licences cannot be moved between Pi boards.

It happens - it's a commercial product. One criticism often levelled at education is that it fails to prepare them's what's doing it for the rigours of real life. The whole Pi thing so far has been a window on the world of having an idea and putting it out there. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. One day someone will hopfully write a paper on the Foundation's rather bizarre roadtrip and use it as teaching material!

Regarding dongles. We use them too. Great if you want to run that s/w on more than one computer, but the possibility of loss or theft gives me the heebies.I hate paying for them as well, because they're supposed to be raising extra revenue for the software vendor! Why aren't they free? And why are there different formats? Agh!

It's not  a commercial product... Well it shouldn't be a commercial product:

- If it's a commercial product is a low quality one with lots of problems not being solved.

- If it's not a commercial product a lot of effort is being made to make profit from it.

I'm waiting any copy of this made with an AllWinner chip or similar. Even if it's made as a commercial product I bet it would be 10 times better than what the RaspberryPi Foundation is offering.