So far as I can tell, this significantly limits the hack value of the Raspberry Pi. Sure, it runs Linux... whatever version was current when it first shipped. Considering Ubuntu and Fedora both ship new releases every six months, a year and a half or two years into the future and what you can do with the Raspberry Pi will be limited to what outdated binary packages you can find, or what software you're prepared to compile yourself on a tiny embedded processor.
I guess $25 isn't exactly a high price to pay for six months to a year of messing about, but it seems a sad fate for an otherwise remarkable piece of hardware.
I think you are too pessimistic on it's lifetime. Firstly, the foundation will likely continue to update the software. Most of the patches they made to the kernel are going to be submitted upstream. Even if the foundation doesn't do it, it can be maintained by the community. It's not infeasible to maintain a fork, although the work will increase with time. Even if it becomes stuck on an older kernel version, it's still not very difficult to run a distribution on top of that, since the userspace-kernel interface is very stable.
The community can't maintain the patches, thanks to Broadcom's policy of not releasing documentation unless you commit to ordering a hundred trillion parts or are employed by them (as the Raspberry Pi folks are).
If the point of this thing is to promote computer science education, then it's already dead. Remember, not everything happens in userspace. For example, there are advanced operating systems courses out there that are focused very closely on the low-level side or are based on non-GPL-compatible operating systems where they can't simply lift stuff out of Linux.
It's nobody's loss but Broadcom's: the educators will go for platforms like BeagleBone instead (which, although more than double the price, is still cheap), the students will have the benefit of well-documented hardware, and TI will be happy that many of those students who grow up to work in the embedded space will be specifying TI (rather than Broadcom) SoCs.
Whilst I would certainly agree it would be nice for the chip to be open-sourced, saying that it means the Pi is 'already dead' is ridiculous hyperbole.
The Raspberry Pi is designed for computer science education, but it's designed primarily for Children, not University Students. If you're at the point of running 'Advanced Operating Systems' courses then you can find whatever you need, but 12 year olds aren't likely to be doing that.
What they folks at Rasberry Pi are trying to do is encourage people who've never coded before to start writing programs. If they can write simple userspace linux programs (I'm talking text adventures and the like) that's what's important. The device isn't intended to replace ultra-hackable low level devices, it's just a cheap PC that children can tinker with without their parents yelling at them if they break the family PC.
They absolutely don't need special hardware to start programming.
I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that my first exposure to coding was when I typed "10 PRINT BUTT 20 GOTO 10" into BBC BASIC. I didn't need anything more than the computer I had at school. The modern-day equivalent - typing "python" into the terminal - isn't much different, and still a lot easier and cheaper than getting something to run on an external Linux board.
This IS today's version of the BBC Micro. AFAIK, the BBC Micro was a cheap design to encourage computer education since regular PCs were very expensive.
I too cut my teeth on a BBC Micro. My school had ~20 of them. If they'd bought PCs, they would have had maybe 5?
The Raspberry Pi will do the same thing today, especially in poor countries which don't have computers as a matter of course in their schools.
You're talking from an overly Western-centric perspective when you say that typing "python" is cheaper than the RPI.
The world has 7 billion people, many of whom live in poor countries. At $35 with the ability to use a regular TV as a console, this thing is well within the reach of poor person even in a poor country like India to buy as a splurge for his kid who he's told my their teacher is bright.
I, for one, think this is going to be revolutionary.
PS: I also plan to use it for some home automation projects. It can run off of batteries (!!!!!), and is a plain old GNU/Linux distro. How cool is that.
The BBC Micro was actually quite expensive compared to the other micros of the time. (I don't think the IBM PC was ever considered a "micro", and other micros were probably more capable anyway.) If I remember correctly, the goal was not to produce a design that would compete mostly on cost but rather one that was British and would do the flashy stuff the BBC wanted to show on their computing series.
I agree that the Raspberry Pi will be revolutionary, not because it will rejuvenate computer science teaching, but simply rather because it's a cheap computer.
> I agree that the Raspberry Pi will be revolutionary, not because it will rejuvenate computer science teaching, but simply rather because it's a cheap computer.
Yep. It looks we were mostly in agreement then! :)
I guess $25 isn't exactly a high price to pay for six months to a year of messing about, but it seems a sad fate for an otherwise remarkable piece of hardware.