Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

I've been the admin/editor of the primary embedded Linux wiki: elinux.org for about 6+ years now and have been tinkering with Linux on devices for as long as I can remember. This has given me a nice vantage point to observe the community evolve from the days of $10,000 dev boards, through early console hacking to get at specific interesting or uncommon architectures (such as the SuperH processor in the Dreamcast), to todays world of cheap, ubiquitous boards such as the BeagleBoard, PandaBoard, Snowball, etc. and now the RaspberryPi.

Firstly, I commend Eben Upton and his co-founder for initiating the RaspberryPi project. Ultimately, it will result in greater educational opportunities for many people who are interested in Linux, in embedded development, and who have a great idea for an interesting project but little resources to get started. A couple of comments though:

1) Price. Sure the BeagleBoard is approximately $100; but the parts list, schematics, etc. have always been available allowing anyone with the know how to duplicate it at a cheaper price if they wanted to. I would argue that RaspberryPi owes a huge, huge thanks to the BeagleBoard project. I doubt there would be RPi without the Beagle, as the Beagle and the community that has grown around it has shown that low cost dev boards are very useful. Saying that "somebody in that BeagleBoard value chain has got to be making a pile of money..." is not very responsible though. Statements as such should be backed up with proof. This is not a competition, we're all in this together.

2) Community. The single most important success factor for the RaspberryPi's success will be the community that grows around it. Having watched the elinux.org stats, I can say that the community is off to a great start, as the number of RPi pages has spiked tremendously over the last couple of months. But the interesting thing to me that fosters true success, is when a core set of members of the community with highly advanced knowledge of the board and Linux embraces the technology. The most evident example of this is the BeagleBoard/BeagleBone community. A community needs these people to figure out the really hard problems, be able to communicate the solutions adequately, and to stick around for the long haul to explain things over, and over, and over to every new user that arrives on the scene. I can tell you that in #beagle, I've seen very dedicated community members help people get their SDCards formatted thousands of times. The thing about these hackers who carry the community forward is that (in my experience) they have a passion for freedom. So I'll be interested to watch (and help) the RPi community grow and see where it ends up.

Now if only my board would arrive ;)