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Comment by unnouinceput | Hacker News Reader

Quote: " Now, there is at least some hope that the Raspberry Pi Foundation might be able to get permission to release the source code for its version"

This is something that always irked me about RPi's. How the fuck, you, the hardware vendor, that's suppose to know the inner guts of your product, do not have full production for its software? That you need it to rely on undisclosed 3rd party blobs!! Yes, yes, I know about the politics and the business logic that led to this situation but that was at beginning, when money were need it. Nowadays they are in a good place in that regard, might wanna pivot so they fully control everything, but I guess once you go with a bad design, the complacent around that just grows.

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They're the vendor, not the manufacturer. Dell don't release all the source code for the components they construct their devices from.

Getting downvoted because nobody took the time to read your post, I assume. RPi foundation could probably have their own SoC made at this point, and (finally) having fully open firmware would be a huge selling point and maybe help stave off the clones. So why don't they do that?

They almost certainly cannot afford to do that at the prices they are selling these things for. I'm also not entirely certain a large enough fraction of their customer base cares enough for them to take action here. They are likely doing the practical thing that makes the most sense.

The RPi 5 has custom silicon.

Custom silicon is hard and few would accept significant a step down in raw power compared to the previous generation while the transition occurs.

[Article author/submitter here]

> RPi foundation could probably have their own SoC made at this point

"Could have"? The RP2040 chip in the Pi Pico is their own silicon. The RP1 "south bridge" chip in the new Pi 5 is also their own silicon.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/21/pi_pico/

This is nothing new. They've been doing it since 2016-2018.

Designing / building an entire modern(ish) SoC is an order of magnitude different than building a microcontroller (or even something as ambitious as RP1)—I don't think it's impossible for Raspberry Pi someday, but certainly not at their current size / staffing!

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