this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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It was nice knowing Raspberry Pi while they lasted. Going to suck losing something that has changed the homegrown embedded system hobby forever.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 4 months ago (11 children)

Everyone here seems pretty negative on this news. Any particular reason?

[–] [email protected] 224 points 4 months ago

Going publicly traded fucks every company up with nextquarter-itis.

[–] [email protected] 163 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Mostly that IPOs put companies into 'infinite growth mode' which is obviously impossible, so their product just degrades over time. They can't just do 'good enough' anymore.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Also the reason why every company that is consistently 'good' is run privately. If you answer to nobody but yourself you have a lot more room for long term plans

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

The real sad thing is that you and the person you replied to are talking like "publicly traded" and "private" are the only two options, because worker cooperatives are so rare everybody forgets about them.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 4 months ago (1 children)

For me anything "private" just means you can't buy shares publicly. Worker cooperatives would be included in that (since you need to be a worker to own a "share")

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

And those go public anyway. I used to work for the largest employee owned company.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Costco might be an exception here, though may degrade once the leading team dies or exits.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Well, the founder made death threats and I for one believe him.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

If I ever become famous, I hope it's for a quote with context as great as this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I heard someone suggested they raise the price of the $1.50 hot dog.......and he just lost it.

......./shitpost

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Just because you are private, doesn't mean that you answer only to yourself. It depends on how the company is structured and what shares (if any) the leadership holds. In some cases it can be worse because the person who has the shares to force you to do what they want will be able to keep their position without any oversight. Boards in public trades companies are at least public.

Discord is a great example of this. They are privately held and their quality is starting to go down.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Shout-out to Patagonia.

[–] [email protected] 87 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Raspberry pi foundation was launched as a charity, and the end goal was to produce a ton of very cheap computers to help children learn about programming. Since then, it has been soo ubiquitous for embedded stuff that for the last couple of years they have basically become unaffordable for the very audience they were intended for. Now they are seeking an ipo because they are used in everything, except as cheap computers for children.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Are they really used in a bunch of stuff? I still onlt see them included in hobby/homelab/maker/education stuff.

[–] [email protected] 78 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Every time a company goes public, they become more and more profitable until the only way to continue on that trajectory is to worsen their own product.

Think they'll still be selling the Pico for $4 or the Zero for $15 after they're reporting to shareholders?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Big pharma companies jack up the prices of life saving medicine that's been affordable for decades and don't lose a bit of sleep. You bet your ass a hobby electronics company will jack up prices as far as they think they can.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago

Price is one thing but the push for returns on investments is massive, this means that it's time to start cutting corners on everything (except maybe marketing! Yea!). Quality, repairability, and innovation all start to crumble.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Don't call Raspberry a hobbyist electronics company. Their primary consumer has been business and enterprise customers for years now, industrial/controls companies jumped all over the pi as a super easy drop-in board that can be programmed by any code monkey.
The Pi hardware shortage of the last few years has mostly been because of this demand, with Raspberry openly saying they were prioritizing bulk corporate orders foe their production volume over hobby consumers. Fuck the little guy, Pi is dead.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 4 months ago

Going public introduces shareholders that prioritizes return on investment as opposed to making technology and knowledge about technology accessible for many.

It doesn't always end this way but often enough to worry about it...

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Because the more commercial they get, the more they stray from their original purpose as a charity to provide low-cost machines for kids to learn about computer science.

First there was the Dynabook, then OLPC, then Raspberry Pi, and now we've basically got to start over yet again because enshittification is imminent.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago

In Tech, an IPO means the business is market ready to be sold off in pieces, ie stocks. The people who buy the product don't care what it does, they use the product maker as a vehicle to more growth and profit. Typically that means the people who now own the business make poor choices about cost cutting, like off shoring support and removing unuseful documentation while removing people with critical tribal knowledge about processes. Each step the new owner takes will be to make the business more profitable, and in the world of business, the only thing they care about are the numbers and not the environment or people that created those numbers.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago

Opening up to institutional investment means opening yourself up to ownership by a culture that demands infinite growth. In recent years this has gotten particularly bad; with the rise in interest rates, stocks can no longer deliver moderate growth and still be considered worthwhile investments. Everything is either a rocketship to the moon, or its a sell. Combine that with a string of US court cases that have interpreted tge law in such a way as to foster the belief that its illegal for companies to put anything ahead of shareholder value, and what you get is a top down imperative to squeeze the maximum profit out of everything. When you see Microsoft mulling over ideas like putting ads in your start menu, or EA talking about in-game advertising, this is why. When you see Spotify raising prices multiple times while crowing about how their content production costs are basically non-existent and changing their contracts so that smaller artists literally don't get paid for their music, this is why.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

They did spend the last few years screwing over any customer that wasn't some giant corporation on a product that was originally created as a low cost tool for educational purposes.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They think that it's gonna ruin the company

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

And they're right.