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Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

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Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#71
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do we stop this cycle where it's a (well-deserved) reluctant goodbye every time a company we like seeks to go public and IPO? venture communism instead of venture capitalism? peer-to-peer communism instead of the client server state? http://media.telekommunisten.net/manifesto.pdf

While I respect your willingness to think outside of the box, and am thankful for your reply, I am old enough to remember that communism is not something I personally desire.

Pure communism as conceived in theory is not the same thing as the Soviet and Chinese applications which are really authoritarianism.

Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The profit motive inherent to a public company does not seem compatible with that mission. You cannot have any kind of a company without profit. Period. I am not sure where the vilification of profit comes from (not addressing you in particular but rather the general concept), its just silly. Companies have layers upon layers of costs in their financial equation. Employees and ongoing operational expenses being the…

> Even charities have to operate at a profit. Without this they would not have people, offices, marketing and the means to perform their stated charitable objectives. This is factually incorrect. Charities (at least in the UK) are legally prohibited from making a profit.

How do they pay for salaries, operating expenses, building rent, vehicle purchases, electricity, marketing, etc?

They take a percentage of their income and use it to cover these expenses. Right?

Well, this is semantics. A conventional business does exactly the same thing. They take a percentage of their income and use it to cover the cost of doing business.

Laws for non-profits generally allow for such things. Which makes sense, because they would not be able to survive without being able to slice off some "profit" to stay alive and grow.

If you've ever seen the massive church campuses in Texas you'd get a sense of the idea that this is, in fact, profit.

The range a typical nonprofit spends on administrative or operating expenses is wide. I would say that 40% isn't rare, with 25% being fairly common. This tracks with the profit margin of small to medium for-profit businesses. In fact, there are millions of for profit businesses that do not enjoy such margins.

The key legal distinction (at least in the US) seems to be that nonprofits cannot exist for the benefit of shareholders (no distributions). Other than that, they can easily spend 40% of what comes in on operations, grow cash in the bank and more.

Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#74
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under expenditures it has raising funds as 90% of the cost. Raising funds for what?

Cost of production/R&D of the Raspberry Pis.

My understanding is that this is what Rapsberry Pi Trading Ltd does.

Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#76
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I respect your willingness to think outside of the box, and am thankful for your reply, I am old enough to remember that communism is not something I personally desire.

Pure communism as conceived in theory is not the same thing as the Soviet and Chinese applications which are really authoritarianism.

Unfortunately theory once it hits reality is often found to be untenable.

The aggregation of power into some kind of central authority system for the good of the people always ends up bad for the people.

Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#77
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I respect your willingness to think outside of the box, and am thankful for your reply, I am old enough to remember that communism is not something I personally desire.

Pure communism as conceived in theory is not the same thing as the Soviet and Chinese applications which are really authoritarianism.

Can you point to a communist government which has not devolved into authoritarianism?

I cannot. It seems to be the inevitable end of that form of government.

Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#78
post #9

RIP RPi. I thought the whole idea was to produce boards, priced near cost, for educational/inspirational purposes? ie to give today's kids the same kind of intro to computers (you have to program it) as kids enjoyed with the home computers of the 80's. The profit motive inherent to a public company does not seem compatible with that mission.

> I thought the whole idea was to produce boards, priced near cost, for educational/inspirational purposes?

I think it's quite clear this is not the case. They have plenty of clearly business oriented board designs like these:

https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/compute-module-4/?varia...

Teach the kids Raspberry Pi and then they'll know Raspberry Pi and hopefully push to use it in their jobs 10 years later or whatever. Maybe that's the idea (too)?

Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#79
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I respect your willingness to think outside of the box, and am thankful for your reply, I am old enough to remember that communism is not something I personally desire.

Pure communism as conceived in theory is not the same thing as the Soviet and Chinese applications which are really authoritarianism.

[deleted]

Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#80
post #22

> The Raspberry Pi Foundation, formed in 2009, is a registered charity with a goal of putting “the power of computing and digital making into the hands of people all over the world.” The famous eponymous SBC was designed to be affordable and champion programming in schools, hoping to repeat the home computer boom of the 1980s. Raspberry Pi Trading Ltd is a wholly-owned subsidiary responsible for the engineering and t…

The Trading part designs and manufactures(or purchases manufacturing capacity) of the boards. You couldn't do all that as part of the charity, especially given they also make products specifically designed for industrial use.

That doesn’t sound like trading.
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