Raspberry Pi Holdings has always been a for-profit company. This isn’t some sort of new news with them going public.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a separate organization that has not gone public and continues to operate as a nonprofit. In fact, the IPO was structured to raise some funds for the foundation’s global impact fund.
I am not saying that the IPO is a good thing, in fact I’m pretty certain it isn’t, but it’s worth knowing that Raspberry Pi is two different organizations with two different missions.
For months it was impossible for me to get any Pis at MSRP and then my employer suddenly bought 30 of them to use for signage around the office. That’s when I knew the non-profit hobbyist/enthusiast org was gone.
I’m not worried about it though. In the meantime a lot of other stellar SBCs have emerged on the market.
Honestly I still haven’t had a chance to try them out myself so I can’t make a specific recommendation but that market has been exploding recently. I have a sort of nice problem where people keep gifting me their Raspberry Pi’s once they aren’t sure what to do with them so I keep accumulating them without trying.
That being said, the big ones I’ve had my eye on lately are things like the Odroid N2+, the Jetson Nano, the Rock Pi or the Banana Pi. Some of these cater more towards being integrated into projects that need a lot of GPIO, others are focused on just being a low cost low power headless server or thin client.
The SBC market seems healthy enough that by the time I need another SBC I’ll have a lot of options. Biggest loss is just that having one extremely popular hobbyist board made it really easy to find solutions to issues in the community and now there is just a lot more variety out there.
You couldn’t buy anything in retail because of scalpers. British shops decided to stop scalpers, so would only sell to existing customers who bought Pis before shortages. So, for example, I had no issues getting 3 more Pis. But if you would make a brand new account you’d see them out of stock permanently. This system worked like a charm! But they should’ve done it earlier.
I’m glad they came out as what they already were.
It was clear that they did not feel as a non-profit foundation for many years now.
Raspberry Pi Holdings has always been a for-profit company. This isn’t some sort of new news with them going public.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a separate organization that has not gone public and continues to operate as a nonprofit. In fact, the IPO was structured to raise some funds for the foundation’s global impact fund.
I am not saying that the IPO is a good thing, in fact I’m pretty certain it isn’t, but it’s worth knowing that Raspberry Pi is two different organizations with two different missions.
One is a tax shelter for the other got it.
For months it was impossible for me to get any Pis at MSRP and then my employer suddenly bought 30 of them to use for signage around the office. That’s when I knew the non-profit hobbyist/enthusiast org was gone.
I’m not worried about it though. In the meantime a lot of other stellar SBCs have emerged on the market.
Which would you recommend any as the best Pi replacement?
Honestly I still haven’t had a chance to try them out myself so I can’t make a specific recommendation but that market has been exploding recently. I have a sort of nice problem where people keep gifting me their Raspberry Pi’s once they aren’t sure what to do with them so I keep accumulating them without trying.
That being said, the big ones I’ve had my eye on lately are things like the Odroid N2+, the Jetson Nano, the Rock Pi or the Banana Pi. Some of these cater more towards being integrated into projects that need a lot of GPIO, others are focused on just being a low cost low power headless server or thin client.
The SBC market seems healthy enough that by the time I need another SBC I’ll have a lot of options. Biggest loss is just that having one extremely popular hobbyist board made it really easy to find solutions to issues in the community and now there is just a lot more variety out there.
You couldn’t buy anything in retail because of scalpers. British shops decided to stop scalpers, so would only sell to existing customers who bought Pis before shortages. So, for example, I had no issues getting 3 more Pis. But if you would make a brand new account you’d see them out of stock permanently. This system worked like a charm! But they should’ve done it earlier.