Re: Pi Forums

John,

  I agree completely.

There was lots of unsatified interest in RasPi and lots of unanswered questions

I think there continues to be lots of unanswered questions, not the least of which

are what's up with USB issues, what's up with SD card corruption, what's up with

X11 acceleration, what's up with plans for an educational release, what's up

with product positioning vs. BBB, is RPi focused on promoting educational materials

and the platform is secondary, or is RPi focused on promoting a platform and the

educational materials are secondary?

When RasPi came back, cranky admins and moderators had short fuses and a lot of people got banned from there.

I think that the RPi moderators have been very hesitant to ban users recently,

but they continue to show no hesitation to lock threads and quarrel with users, such as

"And secondly, the Raspi is NOT CRAP."

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=48109&start=22

or lock threads over "concern trolling"

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=45512&start=34

or

   "So many warnings, and yet you still cannot help piling in with nonsense. I can only assume you have been drinking, but I suggest you actual do some investigfation - like a professional would do before spouting off.

Locked."

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=46757

Oh dear.

I haven't been paying any attention to the "World according to RPF" for a long time now, but I find it quite sad to hear that with over a full year behind them, they've still not learned anything about professional behavior and how to conduct  community relations calmy and responsibly.

It doesn't matter though.  They made their single really important contribution when they set the price of Pi far below anything else that was remotely comparable.  Everything else is secondary, and the details of board faults and moderation incompetence will rapidly fade into the mists of time.

The price point, in contrast, has affected everyone in this area of technology, far beyond ARM, and is unlikely to disappear.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

It doesn't matter though.  They made their single really important contribution when they set the price of Pi far below anything else that was remotely comparable.  Everything else is secondary, and the details of board faults and moderation incompetence will rapidly fade into the mists of time.

 

The price point, in contrast, has affected everyone in this area of technology, far beyond ARM, and is unlikely to disappear.

RasPi's price point has the excellent effect of getting a lot of people to look at GNU/Linux and lots of other FLOSS [Free-as-in-Liberty Open Source Software] and discover the many advantages of FLOSS over "digital handcuffs".

John Beetem wrote:

 

RasPi's price point has the excellent effect of getting a lot of people to look at GNU/Linux and lots of other FLOSS [Free-as-in-Liberty Open Source Software] and discover the many advantages of FLOSS over "digital handcuffs".

As it's in the nature of FOSS activity to be unrestricted and require no accounting, we'll never know how wide the impact has been.  The knock-on effect is undoubtedly much larger than just the number of Pi boards sold.  Android has contributed immensely as well, despite the small number of Android users who actually come into contact with Linux programming.

Microsoft can't be too happy, although it's just unhappiness that they don't rules the entire universe rather than any real danger to their profits.  Their inmates are still chained up solidly.

Intel can't be happy either, but they'll get no sympathy from me until they bring their SoCs down to ARM prices.

I haven't been paying any attention to the "World according to RPF" for a long time now,

In case you missed the news, your RPi moderator friend scep

http://www.element14.com/community/message/55973#55973/l/re-new-rules-in-rpi-ordering-and-shipping-forum (post #2)

http://www.element14.com/community/message/54780#54780/l/re-banned-for-defending-education-and-open-access-publishing (post #7)

http://www.element14.com/community/thread/20081?start=11&tstart=0

has been brought on full time with the title: "Director of Educational Development, Raspberry Pi".

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3375

Earlier he introduced himself as:

I don’t understand 99% of the technical stuff that goes on here. My knowledge of Linux is rudimentary and what I know about electronics wouldn’t fill the back of a Raspberry Pi board even if it was written in special TeacherFont (size 18, underlined Comic Sans if you want to add it to your styles). I don’t dream in machine code and I never got annoyed about the Pi losing I²S because I don’t even know what that means.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/619

Well, they do have their problems, there's probably enough material there for a whole thesis in social pathology, but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter as Pi is a known quantity now.  Hopefully enthusiasts and beginners alike who find their discussions blocked or simply rejected by devout fanboiism will find their way over here, or will move to a board with better documentation, more hardware compatibility, and a more reliable USB subsystem.

John Beetem wrote:

 

And now RasPi has removed the link to the RasPi Wiki from their front page. 

That's all rather odd, especially given they've been promoting elinux as their wiki of choice for so long. I'm not about to dig further as I suspect I'll not like what I find.

So we'll probably get even more traffic here.

That depends, I always get the feeling that the e14 community site isn't as generally well known as it could be.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

or will move to a board with better documentation, more hardware compatibility, and a more reliable USB subsystem.

I converted a couple of folks at work to BBB last week, only took a couple of minutes. By the time they'd downloaded the SRM and scanned the first couple of pages they were reaching for their wallets

The downside is that I spent most of today going through all the faq stuff like opkg update being broken   It does seem that they got versions with dimmed down leds though which is a good thing and suggests that CPC must be shifting their stock reasonably quickly.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

It doesn't matter though.  They made their single really important contribution

...prompting others to produce better boards at a competitive price ?

selsinork wrote:

 

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

It doesn't matter though.  They made their single really important contribution

...prompting others to produce better boards at a competitive price ?

That's true, but the low prices are only possible because RasPi showed that there is demand for US$35 GNU/Linux boards with no case, no power supply, no cables, no mass storage, and nobody to call when it doesn't work.  You can't get board prices that low unless you can get 10K volumes (and 100K pricing for key components) and you can't get the green light to manufacture those volumes unless you can convince whoever is providing the money that there will be demand for them.