Except that Broadcom released "full documentation for the VideoCore IV graphics core, and a complete source release of the graphics stack under a 3-clause BSD license" [1], enough to enable a blob-free graphics driver. Code has already been committed to Mesa [2].
That is a lot more than you can say about the PowerVR core in the Beaglebone advocated by another response to this post.
Beaglebone can be at least booted without non-free blobs, so it can be 100% free if you don't need to use 3D acceleration. Raspberry Pi cannot - even now with free GPU drivers, you still cannot get Linux working without providing non-free firmware blob to it first.
Of course you're referring to me. Arguing the whole openness of the video driver is a dead end [1]. If you want an open video driver use Intel, or AMD and be done with it.
Give me a hand-cranked universal Turing machine and I've basically got the same device as a RPi. The only difference, it's cheap, and I don't have to get a workout hand-cranking it. Video is just a (semi-)fixed functional unit. Sure, it'd be nice to have open drivers, but so would having the RTL of the processor, and the netlist and gerber of the board. Then they could actually talk about teaching kids something they actually couldn't learn with just having access to a hand-cranked universal Turing machine.
The fact that the foundation and Broadcom get their free goodwill from their claim of "for-the-sake-of-the-children" is the real source of my ire. Look at how many references to "industry" the article quotes from representatives of the foundation. Like the embedded SOM has anything at all to do with education, or the continuance of production of older models. Please...
Do you think it is feasible to release a similarly priced, similarly capable device with completely open hardware?
The RPi has sold immensely to home users, but also in education. The foundation is also open to criticism and has shown in the past that they are willing to change their production when given the opportunity. They have moved most of their production to the UK for example, whereas the first boards were all manufactured off shore.
It would be difficult in the near term. With lowRISC (http://www.lowrisc.org), some of us are working towards a complete open source SoC (i.e. the RTL is available under a permissive open source license). Although our longer term goals include being an acceptable SoC for a phone or tablet, the first iteration won't feature a GPU.
My, overly-impassioned, exaggerated point is that the RPi is no better that many other competing devices on the market and should me measured solely on technical/business merit. The popularity of the device has spawned a product category of itself. However, at this point in time, claiming something about education is total rubbish. Take the old Pi, run ARMv7 QEMU on it et voila you have the new Pi. There is nothing new to learn, to grow, to probe questions about. The GPIO of the device could just as easily be be provided by a USB breakout board, etc, etc. Cypress had a $4 PSOC prototype board and if anyone (especially Cypress) bothered to develop open-source tooling for it, it would have be a far more useful device to learn from.
(As an aside: thank you to HNer asb and colleagues for the lowRISC project. Also, thank you to people like "bunnie" and "xobs" for Novena. These are real people, with real projects working with the best of intentions.)
I think you've missed what layer the education is targeted at: software, especially Python but also Scratch, SonicPi, and so on. The hardware stuff is at the "turn on LED with GPIO" super-introductory level.
Eben Upton and the foundation should rightly be lauded for the RPi Model A. That was 3 years ago. What purpose does this update serve? If it's the "developing world", then you haven't made the device any cheaper, and more functional competitors at similar price-points have existed for at least a year. As for the "developed world", I could have bought a Chromebox for $150 on Black Friday. I'm sure a school could easily negotiate that price and have a device that easily has >6x the functionality (and far more open thanks to tireless work of the coreboot team and Googlers working with Intel on minimizing the closed bits).
What again is the point of the RPi2? What new thing does it bring to the table that an at most $5 set of GPIO pins, in the physical form of the Pi connector, off a USB plug with an API can't bring to a basic PC?
The core target is unchanged - kids in the UK. The exact functionality level isn't nearly as critical as the standardisation of the system and its community support. Updating it keeps it competitive so people don't fret about being stuck on old technology.
What a Pi brings over a PC is ownership, stability, and freedom from the usual risks of breaking a PC. You can fiddle with any of the software on a Pi and always get it back by replacing the SD card. PCs are vulnerable to tinkering and inadvisibly installed software.
It pleases me to see you mention the PSoC 4. I think it's a highly underrated educational tool due to the software stack used to develop on it. If they were to open up the platform I know several places that would love to use it when teaching kids about hardware and software development.
To respond to jvdh, yes it is possible. Others have mentioned the more capable Allwinner based Olimex devices.
And if this really is an issue of "Buy Britain" why isn't the device based on Bristol based Xmos silicon. Now there's something that's a really neat platform.
In short, the RPi is an inexpensive enough device that a lot of hobbists can buy on a whim and proceed to install and reinstall various flavours of linux on to marginally satisfy their sense of somehow being "hackers". As I said in my initial post to this announcement, the work of the foundation in making a cheap computer a reality has been totally ground-breaking.
Now everything has been turned into at best a marketing exercise. Now there's news of RPi2 as a Windows IoT platform, with requisite Windows machine for dev work. Will wonders cease to amaze...
I started out when you had to pay hundreds of dollars to get even a C compiler (for MS-DOS). I amused myself by hex editing COM files (because I figured out that for some reason it worked better than EXEs when randomly changing stuff) and using "debug" to assemble simple programs. I wanted to make EXEs and I didn't know how, and MS BASIC didn't make them for reasons I didn't understand. I didn't know where to get MASM that the few public library books I could find were on about. Then I got on a BBS with a program called Telix and got something called Turbo Pascal, and my life kinda changed. Writing directly to segment B800...
And then a few later Linux came on the scene and I discovered the magic of having GCC just there waiting for you. But this had to happen at school, after school hours because I had a 8088 at home, and I needed a 386 which thankfully my teacher allowed me to set up a dual boot for...
I will _never_ _ever_ allow computing to be made inaccessible to my future generations to understand and learn from. I don't want to drone on about this issue, but proprietary is fine. Making money is fantastic, necessary, and a beautiful indication of the value you bring.
But putting people in a prison of no understanding is not at all okay.
The irony is that the Pi comes from someone who has exactly that kind of childhood hacking background who wants to replicate it for everyone else. It's the opposite of a "prison of no understanding". Holding out for free-to-RTL hardware is allowing the best to be the enemy of the good.
That is a lot more than you can say about the PowerVR core in the Beaglebone advocated by another response to this post.
[1] http://www.raspberrypi.org/a-birthday-present-from-broadcom/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_graphics_d...