are you spoiling it?

[skiwithpete]

This is just a point of view for consideration.

For some time, I have been following the progress of the RPi. Everyday, as I check the forums and the front page I see new progress towards this device. But, with every passing post ahead of the final release I also feel a sense of loss and disappointment.

At first, seeing Quake3 run on an RPi gave me a sense of excitement and anticipation. And yet, by completing this within your team you have taken something away from the ambitious young programmers out there who might have undertaken this themselves.

Instead of turning an entire fleet of hobbyists eager to make their mark, a select group of corporations and individuals have been given a select number of Alpha boards, in advance, while the rest of us are forced to watch from the sidelines.

Sure, the counter argument is simple: \"Don\'t worry, there will be lots to do once these boards are released.\" But why make us sit on the sidelines at all? If this device is really about enabling people to learn, why are you taking that power away from the community and individuals who could learn and benefit from it?

Why not sell the Alpha boards? I wonder this everyday. Couldn\'t you simply make more of them? Why, at this stage, has RPi chosen to remain closed? What is being waited on ahead of the \"fourth quarter\" release?

As we live in the internet age, there is every chance that members of the RPi team will read this. If you do, then please understand that much like the people who pursued an explanation of how the board is being manufactured, this is a post trying to figure out why the decisions were made to control and release the device in this way. And, through the discourse that might follow, understand if those perspectives are a help or a hindrance to what this project is in the mind of the community.

I do have a personal perspective on this: I wish you would sell an incomplete device so that we, the many, could contribute too.

Perhaps this last comment is new and unfamiliar thinking before this device. No one seeks a partially complete iPad, for example. But the RPi - at least in its present incarnation - is at its most interesting and most compelling, when it is not a fully assembled, ready-to-go device. It is best when people can get behind it and contribute, when we too can figure it out and help it move forward.

Thanks for reading and Godspeed,

P

[ShiftPlusOne]

I think it\'s about the target market. These devices are great for hackers and tinkerers, but that\'s not what it\'s intended for. We\'re just lucky that such a device exists at such a low price point.

What it IS designed for is teaching kids programming without having to worry about braking anything.

Also, I don\'t think we\'re forced to watch from the sidelines. We\'ve got emulated raspi and cross-compiling environments up and running, so we can work on our own distros, optimize existing distros, port software and so on. Would I want to be able to buy an alpha board? Hell yeah! Do I think there is any obligation on behalf of the Raspberry Pi Foundation to mass produce prototype and alpha boards? Absolutely not.

[Andre_P]

Hi skiwithpete,
Let me don my Engineer hat. Note I have nothing to do with Raspberry Pi, just a keen support of the idea.
Right that\'s in place now.
From what I understand the Alpha Board is a prototype. It may indeed have bugs, not only in the layout of the pcb but also in the understanding of how each of the elements of the hardware work and interact with other hardware elements.
The Alpha Boards also allow System Test, ie does the software and the hardware interact successfully, have the hardware guys written the documentation correctly so that the software guys can program it correctly.
To just generate a board and send it out to people without doing testing would be a complete disaster. Bunch of people saying this is useless kills the entire idea.
Also the guys (and yes girls) at Raspberry Pi have a tooo intimate knowledge of the system to be able necessarily think of an unusual failure mode. This is no fault of theres but is the problem with all of engineering. Consider the line

\"Who will guard the guards\"

and you will understand the basic philosophy of letting someone else loose on a development.

However I now turn to the point which is where I think you are gettting at.
Why not let it directly loose on the entire potential environment ?
Ok several reasons.
1. You only have enough money to make a few boards initially.
2. Even if people pay upfront then what price do you charge as production costs change with order level.
3. Would you potentially want to order something that may be broken so badly that you effectively have some pretty sand ?
4. Test Organisation, any testing needs to have some kind of organisation, if we hit a bug how do we log it, fix it and prove that it\'s been fixed ?
5. The entire aim of Raspberry PI, from my perspective, is NOT necessarily aimed at us hobbyists. We will initially be able to provide the funds by buying the first tranche of boards so that the second tranche will be the main target audience which is getting children to learn how to program again. You will want a good base of software to allow the board to be presented to a child so they can start immediately. If you have a good grounded base then the aim of the project will be a success, have something that turns up it\'s toes immediately will fall flat on it\'s face.
Consider a childs point of view, if it doesn\'t work immediately they will lose interest completely and potentially generate a retrograde step in their asperations to learn how to program.
The entire success of the initial BBC Computer Project was that there was a whole load of support ready to go from the first instance, ie you turned it on, there was B.A.S.I.C. ready to go and a plethora of other support.
If Raspberry Pi can get this right then our children will have a great foundation to go on into the future. If they just send it out to us Hobbyists half baked and forget the aim then we will do diservice to the next generation because we want to get our hands on something early that will potentially kill it.
I\'ve been on a bleeding edge of engineering development, taking the time to do it and to do it right IS the key to success.

Anyway that\'s my point of view, thank you for reading it and I as I say I\'m nothing to do with Raspbery Pi so don\'t blame them for my perspective .

[Andre_P]

OH rat\'s misspelling, theres should of course be theirs ! Again my points of view, use of the English Language and general dress sense do not in any way represent Raspberry PI !

[obarthelemy]

It\'s only 2 months, and we now have the tools to pretend we already have a Pi in our PCs. I want to use one of mine as a NAS/Torrent/FTP/Web server, So I\'m gathering docs (no small endeavour for Linux ^^) and trying out stuff in a VM. All software projects, even most OS ones, though neither the hardware nor graphics-oriented ones, can be started this way.. today.
I\'d much rather the (very small) team spent this time working on the final release, than watsing (scarce) resources setting up production, logistics, support for a \"dead\" product.
Especially since the Alpha boards are quite different (and more expensive) to produce than the final boards will be. Hardware hacks in particular will probably not be compatible (different pins, pinouts, less stuff on the final version)...
I don\'t know where your interests are, but I\'m sure you can start working on at least some of them right now.

[Gert van Loo]

[quote]I\'d much rather the (very small) team spent this time working on the final release, than wasting (scarce) resources setting up production, logistics, support for a \"dead\" product.
Especially since the Alpha boards are quite different (and more expensive) to produce than the final boards will be. Hardware hacks in particular will probably not be compatible (different pins, pinouts, less stuff on the final version)...[/quote]
That is indeed the case. We (the Raspberry Pi team) have to do all of this in our spare time. This means we have to be ultra efficient to get the final release out by the end of November. (There is an unbelievable amount of things still to do before we get there.) Producing more Alpha boards would just distract use from that.

[rickyjames]

I\'m a very interested bystander and not an Rpi insider. As somebody with quite a bit of experience in working on short deadline engineering prototype projects (several of which have made it to Earth orbit), I am extremely impressed with what I have observed so far with the management of the Rpi project. Bottom line up front, no, they aren\'t spoiling it at all. The Rpi site started with zero members and first post on July 24. Skiwithpete, you started this thread on September 25 when the site membership was listed as 1973 members. To go from nothing to almost two thousand members in two months is PHENOMENAL and shows the extreme level of interest in this project.

Think about what such explosive growth means. You want the Rpi Foundation to have 2000 extra Alpha boards to hand out to members at a minimum of $25 each and probably double that? It\'s a charity; where are they supposed to get an extra $50K-$100K for more Alpha boards to members that are going straight in the trash when the baseline Rpi comes out in just two more months? I\'m amazed they produced 200 and got them out for testing with prearranged clients, and are apparently incorporating lessons learned into the final version at an amazingly short turnaround time.

IMHO, the main thing that kills fast paced engineering prototypes is loss of focus on the original goal. This leads to mission creep and requirements creep and nothing gets these things going faster than having too many cooks baking up the prototype. Ships have captains for a reason. So do aircraft. And engineering teams developing a prototype need to have the same dynamic - a strong central authority figure that listens as long as they can to as many people as they can justify being in their inner circle and then makes a quick, solid decision to move on to achieve the goal. Site up on July 24 and alpha prototype on August 12 and final version promised for sale to anybody by November 30 - there HAS to be a tight-knit core group to accomplish a schedule like that. Forget releasing the schematics, an Rpi management tell-all should be a required-reading business case study.

Let me tell you where I think the weak spot is in the current Rpi effort as I see it. This charity foundation has as their goal a laudable kids education objective, not creation of a cool new geek toy. Yet at this site, only 353 of 8239 posts are on education topics, or less than 5%. There are 31 education-topic threads out of 595 total discussion threads, again at only around 5% of the total.

The foundation is doing a fantastic job of both developing an engineering component in record time and also drawing an incredible amount of interest from an obviously engineering-oriented membership. But if the true goal of the charity is providing a new educational opportunity for kids, where\'s all of the teachers and educators and even kids coming up with what to do starting December 1 and beyond when the Rpi board is available for shipment?

Bottom line, we don\'t need two-four months of geek tinkering by members at this site with extra Alpha boards, we need two-four months of getting the act together for reaching kids as effectively as possible.

[jamesh]

I\'m sure Liz can add to this, but it is expected that the first batch of boards will mostly go to the Geek set. These guys and gals will be able to hammer away at the device, getting more and more stuff working and optimised - the sort of work we are unable to do fully before launch. We cannot test everything!

This means by the time the educational establishment really wakes up to the device, it\'s already out there, being played with and tested and bugs ironed out - it\'s not new as such. I (personally) think that\'s a good thing.

[rickyjames]

I think if you wait for the \"establishment\" to wake up, you\'re gonna be waiting a long time.

The key to this effort is to get individual kids involved. The whole point is to get individual computers to individual kids.

First idea: Kids like nothing more than to belong to a club. Somehow there needs to be a Rpi kids-only club website with \"merit badge levels\" that the kids earn when they accomplish certain (educational) tasks with their Rpi that are predefined on the site. Maybe some of the 2000+ members here would like to volunteer the next 60 days coming up with the MyRaspberryPi website and associated content for kids?

(Huh - this sounded like such a good idea to me that I went and checked and registered both myraspberrypi.com and myraspberrypi.org just now. Liz, if you\'re reading this, I would be happy to transfer ownership of these domains to your group to let you set up a kids site as a gratis donation to your fine efforts....)

Here\'s an even crazier idea I came up with besides a kids club website. Take a thousand or so tickets redeemable for Rpis and put them in cheap metal tins and hide them all over Britain. The only thing kids love more than a club is a treasure hunt, especially with real treasure. Publish a list of 1000 GPS coordinates on MyRaspberryPi for kids under 18 to go geocaching and find their ticket. If you can send an email photo to MyRaspberryPi proving you\'re a kid with a ticket you\'ve found, you get a free Rpi.

The publicity would be worth the cost in Rpis, I think. Maybe they could be paid for by a buy one, get one program.

Ideas, ideas...I got a million of them. And I\'m still not rich.

[max1zzz]

As a kid (and knowing the current level of IT knowledge of it im my year) i think it is important that we get these things right, these things need to be workable and pretty easy to use. However much i would like to get my grubby little mits on a alpha board it is impeccable that the final board works properly, much more important than getting it released soon. also targeting the modders for the initial release is the way to go, why you may ask? because there\'s nothing kids these days than something that can be modded, take the xbox 360, no kid wants a plain un modified one, they want a jtaged one with a blue rol and a clear side lighted with cold cathodes.

and if you still cant wait, there\'s nothing stopping you preparing for your rpi\'s arrival, right now im attempting to recondition some 3.8ah NiMH for my rpi

[jamesh]

[quote]Quote from rickyjames on September 25, 2011, 19:57
I think if you wait for the \"establishment\" to wake up, you\'re gonna be waiting a long time.
[/quote]

Fair point. I guess what I really meant to write was that by the time the general populace wakes up - not just the geeky ones.