Basically if this is survival mode during the chip shortage, I hope they can do everything possible to make it through this in good shape.
Also I have enough pi's for my needs already, I'd love to build a cluster but IMO cluster projects should be of the lowest priority customers.
I do agree, though, that cluster projects should have a low priority!
For a major vendor (someone linked some korg devices below) to loot this market is no better than the auto vendors who are buying washing machines simply to pull out microcontrollers, or cryptominers destroying the GPU market.
Major vendors can hire fabs to push out their own designs. The RPi is a licensed implementation of ARM, it isn't an industrial platform, from a supply chain point of view, clearly.
Everyone who is shipping a product based on RPi is doing so because they were able to get cheap individual samples to build on. Now that's not possible for new folks.
RPi was designed as an affordable learning computer, now there is not an affordable learning computer available to anyone who can't buy 10,000 parts or whatever.
If you view the current supply shortage is a temporary issue (as much as it doesn't feel very temporary right now), then not being able to provide stock to "us" is also a temporary issue. But failing their OEMs is a long-term issue - if not a permanent one. If Sharp's commercial display business takes a hit because they bought into the rpi ecosystem, and it bit them in the ass - they will not be back (See also: Apple vs nvidia). You seem to take the view that the OEMs deserve it for taking "our boards" - but rpi still take the hit when partners leave them. (and OEMs are a snowball effect: being able to point to examples like Sharp helps them win the next OEM - and I'm pretty sure that if they start publicly losing partners, the loss would only encourage the next loss).
For the rest of us - there's not many great contenders. I'm surprised at this - traditionally pi-alternatives have struggled from the lack of community. If someone else has a way around the supply shortages, this would seem like the best time to get in there and steal that community. But so far they haven't, so there's the best chance we're just going to sit here and wait for the return of the pi.
It's not ideal, it's not fair, life's a bitch. I am annoyed that it impacts me, but I can't begrudge rpi for taking the most sensible option.
I think of the magazine, MagPi. An OEM customer? Indirectly. How can you sustain a hobbyist magazine on the Raspberry Pi when the hobbyist cannot get a Pi for less than $100?
1: https://www.hackster.io/news/mango-pi-launches-allwinner-h616-based-mq-quad-single-board-computer-mcore-h616-som-87343b7936afDamned, I like their boards/schematics/wiki. Single-page wiki entries with /most/ of the info I want (connector=FOO, voltage=BAR, power converter=BAZ (oh, so it's claimed 12V, but commenfary says 9-14V is definitely in the range and the chip manufacturer for the power regulator (like on my NanoPC-T4) says I'll be safe with 5.5-28V).
Cool.
Their boards do have some problems (none that have bothered me for long - look at the schematics and realize that that port is easy to over-tax so swap the cables and life is good), the different software distro's (Ubuntu this, Ubuntu that, Buildroot, Android Xx an Yy) are nice as examples when I'm replacing it with my own.