LeMoog wrote:My assessment is that the foundation only sees one market, that of the electronic hobbyist and education for the same. There are other uses for the RPi and many have purchased them for reasons other than the market envisioned by the foundation.
That the organisation has made efforts to block development in other areas is evident from the android section of this forum, this attempt to limit the use of a product after sale can have major consequences. Especially if your market is not predicable because you do not understand it.
Irrespective of what the foundation wants, people have purchased the RPi for reasons other than those envisioned by the seller.
Those misunderstood sales have funded the continued growth and existence of the foundation, this is a good thing but on the other hand without understanding your market you cannot predict how it will react and that is why the Zero is more popular than expected and why the RPi3 is not a direct replacement for the RPi2 and why running a flawed stealth mode on the RPi3 release was such a bad idea.
If, as seems clear, the foundation doesn't want people buying a RPi for any reason than those they approve then they should continue as they are and they will discover before too long that the only market they have is the one they want.
A limited market that will quickly become saturated and eventually move onto more open minded systems that have the cash, the foundation didn't want, to continue the development of their platforms.
The fact is there is SOC competition and like the post above about the little company and IBM, the only reason IBM won out was because of faith in IBM and no reason to trust an unknown. When the "unknown" is the only one offering what is wanted they do not stay unknown for long, they instead become the standard and quickly move away from their beginnings to make their old competitors obsolete.
Sorry, you post is almost entirely wrong.
Eben is perfectly aware of markets outside education (note, he works for Broadcom, which is an entirely commercial operation) - and the Foundation has consciously tried to help - the Compute module is that foray in to that area. And has pretty low sales compared with the other devices, probably because even though it a cheap way of building a Pi into a product, it still require effort from people who want to use it. And companies and people are just too damn lazy when you have something like a normal Pi that mostly does what you want.
The Foundation has ALWAYS said anyone can buy a Pi - I really cannot see why you think they are trying to stop people outside education buying them. That is completely untrue, and you really need to reassess your attitude there. If they only wanted educational people to buy them, they woudl only sell via educational suppliers (and they would make a hell of a lot more money too)
Android forum - well, there is NO Android for the Pi that works, the Foundation doesn't have the resources or inclination (because, well, it's pretty crap for education) to port it. The actual reason why the Android forum here was closed because us Mods were so cheesed off having to constantly answer "Why no Android, How do I get Android working" types posts. It was wasting so much Mod time. There is a perfectly fine Google+ group if you want to talk Android. Now of course, Android is used in some other areas that Pi could sell in to. But the Foundation has better use for its resources than porting Android. It's a long and painful job (I know), and those resources are better spent elsewhere, geting Raspbian working, getting new boards up and running etc.
I'm always amazed by your sort of post. The Foundation is tremendously successful. 8M boards sold, the most successful UK built computer of all time, has the support of Google and Microsoft, it making inroads in to schools, has a device on the ISS, has trained hundreds of teachers in the UK and USA, has gone from a single core Armv6 to a quad core A53 in 4 years, is the most successful SBC ever made, and cannot make boards fast enough to satisfy demand. So why do you think they are doing it wrong? Or that you have the right ideas for the future? You can tell by the inaccuracies in your post that you really don't understand what is actually going on here.
Principal Software Engineer at Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd.
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