Raspberry Pi

From P2P Foundation
Jump to navigation Jump to search

= "A small, powerful and lightweight ARM-based computer".

URL = https://www.raspberrypi.org

Description

DiDIY:

"The Raspberry Pi is a series of small single-board computers developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to promote the teaching of basic computer science in schools and in developing countries. The original model became far more popular than anticipated, selling outside of its target market for uses such as robotics. The first version was distributed in 2012."

Aspects

DiDIY:

Community

The community organises through a plethora of online spaces, being the official website the most prominent one. It consists of the official documentation and learning resources, a community forum, blog and download section.

Community gatherings and hackatons are organised as “Pi Jams”, while also many Raspberry Pi meetups and educational workshops are organised.

Licensing

The Raspberry Pi designs itself are proprietary and exclusively owned by the foundation, although the diagrams have been published. Only partners are allowed to manufacture the products.

The software is mostly free software: the official Raspbian operating system is derived from Debian Linux (GPLv2). However proprietary drivers are included free of charge for the Broadcom chipset.

The documentation is under a free license: Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike.

Indicators of impact

• Sales: According to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, over 5 million Raspberry Pis have been sold before February 2015, making it the best-selling British computer. By the 9th of September 2016 they had sold 10 million. • Google Incoming Links (raspberrypi.org): 4.140.000. • Alexa Global Rank (raspberrypi.org): 2.963.

Other Although RPi is low-cost and a non-profit community project and most of its software and documentation under free licenses, the hardware designs themselves are non-free and not open source. This fact was observed for example by South-Corea based manufacturer Hardkernel interested in bringing a modified version (called Odroid) on the market with certain enhancements: more features in a much smaller board14. RPi works with chipmaker Broadcom who decided to stop providing Hardkernel with the Broadcom System-on-a-Chip. This forced Hardkernel to stop the sale of Odroid."

Business Model

DiDIY:

Revenue models:

• Royalties from hardware sales through contract manufacturer RS Components11 and its distributor network. • Donations • Education and training programme through the PiCademy.

Modes of production

DiDIY:

"The hardware is designed by the foundation and produced and distributed by contract manufacturer RS Components. The Foundation runs a distributor network.

The software is mostly developed by the community, on top of the Debian Linux operating system. On top of that the community designs and shares shields, or ‘HATs’ (Hardware Attached on Top)."

Governance models

DiDIY:

"The project is owned and governed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which in turn is governed by a Board of Trustees, supported by members."

More Information