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Comment by Zuzz | Hacker News Reader

how is not being able to serve everyone who wants to buy one a problem?

This is a charity with a very clear goal:

"promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing"

as long as they can achieve that they are a success and not being a business means they can gladly "ignore" everyone else.

I really want one (or three) but if they are hit but astonishing demand and decide to give priority to those who will serve they overall purpose the best and not me I'm fine with it. I will not start complaining all over the interweb and accuse them of being a failure.

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Nothing would be better for the educational community than for there to be a much larger community making cheap extensions, how-to guides, tutorials and libraries for it.

Please don't get me wrong here. I in no way think that they're going to be failures, no matter how it turns out. That they're come this far at all already makes them heroes in my book.

Of course they are free to make whatever they want for whomever they want. If they choose to make them from solid gold and sell them to schools for a nickel, good on them.

All I'm saying is that I think an embedded computer that cost so little but still runs the software and has the features of the larger computers that most everyone knows how to program is a bit of a revolutionary idea.

Theoretically, if the demand is present, someone will be willing to fill it, but this is not a product space that DLink or Netgear is likely to explore. It would be a shame if they do indeed reach the limits of their production, prioritize as you suggest, and then we are unable to find out this go around whether the demand was there for 1000 more than they made or 100,000 more.

Like Arduino, the closer they come to getting one into everyone's hands that can create with them, the more valuable they become to everyone.

Because if they actually build to demand and make some money in the process, they will be in a far better position to meet their educational goals than if they deliberately hobble themselves. Failing to take advantage of people throwing money at them is positioning themselves for failure. However good and fuzzy that may make you feel, in the real world they will be failing to accomplish their goals to the extent that the could have, and I for one think that trumps fuzzy feelings about not sullying one's hands so they could serve thousands instead of millions. YMMV, I suppose.

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