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Raspberry Pi/PlatformIO conflict blocks support for Pico-Arduino toolchain

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Re: Raspberry Pi/PlatformIO conflict blocks support for Pico-Arduino toolchain

#21

Post by evv »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #18
al2o3cr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You left out an important detail: Project C is going to have to _support_ your "free" code in their product. If it breaks, even if not because of anything Project C did, their paying customers are going to demand work from THEM. if i want the prestige of my code being in their project LOL yeah that's definitely why this contribution is happening /s

> If it breaks, even if not because of anything Project C did, their paying customers are going to demand work from THEM. Well... isn't that what their customers are paying them for?

Exactly. If PlatformIO had enough paying customers who needed support for this chip, they would probably want to add support for it themselves.

It's the non-paying "customers" who are the problem here, expecting PlatformIO to grow in ways that the core team sees as unsustainable.

Re: Raspberry Pi/PlatformIO conflict blocks support for Pico-Arduino toolchain

#22

Post by clnq »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #4

Comment from Eben Upton of the Raspberry Pi foundation: > We received a proposal from PlatformIO Labs in October 2022. While we absolutely empathise with the challenges of funding open-source projects, we were unable to justify paying the very substantial recurring fees involved. We indicated that we would not be proceeding, and have subsequently made some investments elsewhere What am I missing here? Is PlatformIO r…

I don’t know about the quality of this PR, it looks good at first glance. But sometimes “free” things have significant costs. For example, a project offering a RPi integration will probably have to maintain it and further develop it, or face significant pressure to do so. And if they don’t see that it will be worth it, maybe it won’t. They know their customers and business better than we do.

I have seen this plenty of times in my part of tech (AAA games). People often approach companies asking to integrate their code into games, like FPS unlockers or even entire multiplayer mods. But even if the code and the ideas are offered for free, it will cost significant resources to dedicate team members to porting the work, further developing it until it meets quality standards, certifying an update, pushing it out, and then maintaining it. There are a few dozen of these small costs that add up.

Integration is easier in open source. But not maintenance and further development until the feature meets reasonable expectations. And you can’t really ask anyone who does a PR to maintain the code forever either.

Re: Raspberry Pi/PlatformIO conflict blocks support for Pico-Arduino toolchain

#23

Post by brazzledazzle »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #7
lxe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took me a while to grok the situation solely because of how bizarre the pushback from platform.io people is. I understand (but would still be vupset) if rpi org was disallowing this on the grounds of commercial reasons, not the other way around. But this is just on a whole another level.

Maintainers are well within their rights to say "Fork it" if your vision of the product isn't theirs, or it would add time to their releases, or for no reason at all. One of my favorite examples is https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/04/i-would-like-debian-to-stop... . Supporting a platform is expensive in time and mental energy. PlatformIO is under no requirement to do so. From what I can gather, PlatformIO is not willing…

I think if they had approached this with “we can’t maintain this platform without sponsorship” and solicited it from that from the requester and the general public and behind the scenes contacted the company to inquire about interest it wouldn’t have come off so oddly.

Re: Raspberry Pi/PlatformIO conflict blocks support for Pico-Arduino toolchain

#29

Post by II2II »

hexo wrote: post #24

What is platformio good for except messing up documentation and cluttering knowledge? Never liked the project.

They provide a consistent and simple way to setup multiple toolchains, manage dependencies, and integrate various tools within a popular development environment. While I am not a fan of how everything works, it appears to be the best freely available option out there. For someone who pursues development as a hobby, that's also important.

Re: Raspberry Pi/PlatformIO conflict blocks support for Pico-Arduino toolchain

#30

Post by Majromax »

The comments on the pull request seem to be missing some context, not yet captured by the other HN comments on this story. If PlatformIO is asking for payment, just what is that payment intended for?

In particular, it appears that PlatformIO already notionally supports the Raspberry Pi PICO (https://registry.platformio.org/platforms/platformio/raspber...) platform. Their site even marks it as one of the "top 10" by popularity.

The opening comments of the pull request describe the changes as a 'massive upgrade.' Does this add a new maintenance burden for PlatformIO, or do the proposed changes come closer to fleshing out the support that PlatformIO implicitly promises by including the Pico as a supported platform?

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