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   Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)'s status on Saturday, 10-Dec-2022 15:28:51 JST Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

   A Raspberry Pi was always a convenient device, but it never was Open Hardware. The total failure, IMHO, of understanding what the community wants and what their organisation could not deliver, the ignorance in the current situation - there is a huge opportunity to have a RISC-v based alternative to both Arduino and Raspberry. Who takes it?

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     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Saturday, 10-Dec-2022 15:28:50 JST 翠星石

     in reply to
     @jwildeboer >but it never was Open Hardware
     I don't get what "open hardware" is meant to mean, as source code doesn't pertain to physical objects: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-hardware-designs.en.html
     
     Not having the board design is an issue when it comes to repairs, but isn't always a problem software freedom wise.
     The main problem with the many raspberry pi models currently isn't that the designs are proprietary, but that you can't use them without providing proprietary software.
     There is a project which aims to replace all the proprietary things and is quite successful, but so far hasn't achieved full hardware support.
     
     If full hardware support is achieved with all free software, then the main problem could then be the not having the board design.
     
     >there is a huge opportunity to have a RISC-v based alternative to both Arduino and Raspberry. Who takes it?
     "Alternative" implies that either the Arduino's or Raspberry Pi's are acceptable choices, did you mean replacement?
     
     Arduino's actually aren't too bad - they publish the board design for most boards (not sure under what license), you can operate Arduino's without providing any proprietary *soft*ware and the AVR instruction set is simple and free of patents currently if I remember correctly.
     They're pretty much excellent for anything 5V, but most things are 3.3V now sadly.
     
     The RISC-V instruction set definition and example designs are all under free licenses, the problem is that most manufacturers go and add a bunch of proprietary extensions to the base instruction set and patent those extensions, thus managing to be worse than Aarch64 in most situations somehow.
     
     A lot of RISC-V implementations have the problem of not being bootable without proprietary software as well.
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     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Dec-2022 17:28:25 JST 翠星石

     in reply to

     • ~f
     @vitali64sur >Also the people behind the Pi seem to want to make it free but can't because of Broadcom.
     The people behind the Raspberry Pi were ex-broadcom employees so they knew exactly what they were getting into.
     
     They have sufficient skill and leverage to ensure all the software is libre, but they keep choosing not to.
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     ~f (vitali64sur@mamot.fr)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Dec-2022 17:28:26 JST ~f

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer Librerpi is a thing... Also the people behind the Pi seem to want to make it free but can't because of Broadcom.