> And the Foundation's goal is more about access to computing _education_
A couple of months ago I attended a talk given by Eben Upton. He talked through the history of the entire RPi initiative, starting with his observation that Computer Science admissions at Cambridge University were falling away at quite an alarming rate, and how that inspired the whole thing.
Before attending the talk, I had understood the proposition to be that a cheap home computer put into the hands of kids might spark some natural curiosity, like what happened during the 80s and early 90s home microcomputer era, which would then ultimately lead to more tech-literate kids who would go on to study Computer Science and ultimately have careers in the field.
I'm not sure this was wrong, but it definitely wasn't the whole story.
Eben described the work of the foundation, and it's far more extensive than I had any appreciation for whatsoever. For example, both domestically and internationally the foundation are heavily involved in teacher training, and have played a role in developing curriculum across the globe to further or even initiate IT/CompSci education.
The structure of the Foundation and Trading, he explained, was the most appropriate vehicle under UK tax rules for funding charitable educational work with commercial enterprise. I'm probably simplifying this massively but in essence the flow of profits/dividends/whatever up from the for-profit Trading arm to the charitable Foundation helps to pay for the significant amount of educational work that Foundation does around the world.
I hadn't appreciated many of the forms of educational work that the foundation are involved in at all.
From this perspective, it is perhaps easier to hold a charitable view of Eben's comments around preferential stock availability for small businesses. In the position that they have been in, whereby they're going to sell every unit produced easily whatever the channel, and keeping in mind funding the education goals of the foundation, I think it's entirely reasonable to also help keep some small businesses afloat along the way at the expense of hobbyists.
Prior to this talk, I think my blind spot had been that the entire mission was to put cheap home microcomputers into the hands of kids around the world. I can understand that throttling this home or hobbyist supply in favour of commercial sales takes a bit more to interpret charitably.
But the Foundation is doing so much more than that, and that was entirely lost on me, that failing to fulfill hobbyist market demand no longer looks to me like failing in the original mission.