
Raspberry Pi is merging with a coding foundation - abhas9
https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/26/raspberry-pi-coderdojo-merge/
======
toisanji
"Raspberry Pi Foundation CEO Eben Upton recently said that the organization
would move away from major product launches and focus more on software, as
well as "doubling down" on its charitable work. "

That is unfortunate to hear. Their main contribution has been getting cheap
hardware into the hands of more people. Why would they step away from this? Is
it because its not possible to make it cheaper? Not possible to add more
components like mic,speakers,better gpu? Not possible to get more performance?
Software is important, but I would like to see them continue to release better
hardware.

I try to test out every new edition of raspberry pi as a linux desktop
replacement. Its not there yet, but I dream of the day when I can carry my
whole computer in my pocket and be able to use it anywhere.

~~~
vvanders
Their goal was never to be in the hardware business, Eben's goal was to expand
coding understanding in the UK.

~~~
rickyc091
This is actually the key. From their website "The Raspberry Pi is a tiny and
affordable computer that you can use to learn programming through fun,
practical projects."

It's about learning programming through fun, practical projects. CoderDojo is
a foundation that shares the same goal. RaspberryPi is essentially one way or
tool used to promote learning to code.

With this merger, Ebon can get a better understanding of the struggles people
have and perhaps create other ways to help people learn to code.

------
oblib
Eben has spoke of the hardware limits of the platform and the foundation has
been putting a lot of effort into the software over the past year. Up until
recently the software was not taking full advantage of the hardware.

The software has gotten a lot closer now, and work continues on optimizing and
polishing it. With just a bit more work on that the Pi will meet the intended
goals originally envisioned for it quite nicely. It's even fair to say it will
exceed them.

A Pi3 actually does function quite nicely as a desktop PC right now. It runs
Libre Office, plays YouTube videos, and the Chrome web browser filled most of
the gaps that stood out in their Epiphany browser.

What you can do with it beyond that is pretty amazing so it really doesn't
make a lot of sense for the foundation to be spending a lot of cash and effort
to produce a more powerful hardware platform until something in that domain
changes that makes that easy and cost effective.

Also, the foundation has been working on making their software (PIXEL) run on
other hardware platforms ([https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/pixel-pc-
mac/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/pixel-pc-mac/)) so they are providing a
hardware upgrade path with that route.

Finally, there are 3rd party hardware boards that are more powerful available
that will run PIXEL now ([http://www.banana-pi.org](http://www.banana-pi.org))
and this might give them a boost in sales which would be a good thing.

------
MikusR
So they are going from making cheap Linux boards to using MacBooks.

~~~
oblib
Not really "going from". More like adding to the list of devices that will run
their OS.

