Raspberry Pi Foundation boss waves off listing rumours, says biz discussions may have been 'over-interpreted' Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, has dismissed speculation over a possible stock market float, telling The Register: "It's not something we're actively pursuing." Over the weekend a report in UK national newspaper The Telegraph suggested a potential floatation of the foundation was in the works. A valuation …
>kowtow to stockholders and not customers
My experience is that the change is more subtle, if just as devastating. When you float or sell a company its valued at some multiple of its sales. Money flows in for the sale and that money invariably flows into the pockets of a relative handful of insiders. Seems reasonable, except that this money is now debt owed by the company and by the rules of capitalism that debt has to be serviced out of the operating profits of the company. (Stockholders? Dividends? So passe.....) Since it was in the principals' interests to inflate the value of the company to as much as they could get away with the debt burden quickly becomes crushing -- as profits are raided to service that debt investment withers, the company indulges in numerous rounds of cost cutting until either the enterprise goes bust (or is sold off) or ends up a mere shadow of its former potential self (often you can find them repositioning themselves as vendors of 'services').
There are obviously exceptions to the rule and the processes are more complex but all the startups I've worked at have followed this general pattern.
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Upton is not the boss of the charitable Raspberry Pi Foundation only Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd.
That conflation is common and even seems intentional at times. If they do float that may put an end to the convenient, money-making, pretence that "Raspberry Pi" is purely a charity. The charity actually seems to receive little income from Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd these days.
I wouldn't be buying any stock, investing for the future, if they did float until I could see some effort made to overcome their production capacity limitations.
I've also noticed that RPi has got a bit of an Apple-like following as well. People willing to overlook the flaws and defend maybe poor decisions. Heaven forbid you should criticise the Pi (device or company) in the official forums.
Don't get me wrong, I think the Pi is a great little device. It does most things "well enough" and at a decent enough price. But it isn't perfect and, personally, I wish they hadn't gone for the Micro/mini (can never remember which it is! Lol) hdmi. The whole dual monitor thing is so unessessary or could have been done by replacing the practically unused DSI port as a FPC header for an internal HDMI connector. That would have allowed far more options for making devices with built in screens and better resolutions than the DSI port can do.
And Apple-like in their attitudes to their customers as well. Take for example the recent "We do this sort of thing all the time" comment from E. Upton when asked about adding the Microsoft repository for a non-open version of vscode onto every Pi running PiOS without asking (or even telling) their owners. This was a major "faux pas" to anyone who runs Linux to avoid the BeastOfRedmond's grip.
Yes, but the sanctimonious zealot brigade are relatively few in number. Fortunately. And its not true that they did the repository change without telling anyone, considering they announced the Visual Studio Code addition right at the top of their blog.
Raspberry Pi also seem to have a following of people poised to jump on and magnify any perceived slip, just as Apple do.
That's the way people are and it's no big deal. Just as nobody died because you can't use a power adapter from a Macbook.
But you also see that R-Pi will accept any error without trying to worm out of it and put it right.
Thankfully the vscode workaround was simple and easy.
More troubling is the apparently increasing gap between the foundation and the trading co.
In contrast to a previous commentard, I get the feeling that Rpi is being run by Nominet, rather than hoping it might be a good plan to have the reverse.
I had a slice of ARM before the Softbank take over and made a nice profit on a sale that I voted against. In those days your nominee used to invite your opinion. Now it has been regurgitated and seems to be a target of Nvidia I wouldn’t touch it with an enemies dick.
Aside from it's altruistic origins, how many of the glitches (such as the USB-C and heating issues mentioned in the article) would be accepted with such aplomb if were megacorp? A lot of home engineering and third party workarounds exist for the Pi families challenges and most of them would end up being issued with cease and desist orders and any fuzzy feelings of goodwill will sharp evaporate
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