Eben Upton says hobbyists remain "incredibly important" while he's involved.

The business arm of Raspberry Pi is preparing to make an initial public offering (IPO) in London. CEO Eben Upton tells Ars that should the IPO happen, it will let Raspberry Pi’s not-for-profit side expand by “at least a factor of 2X.” And while it’s “an understandable thing” that Raspberry Pi enthusiasts could be concerned, “while I’m involved in running the thing, I don’t expect people to see any change in how we do things.”

  • @fine_sandy_bottom@aussie.zoneEnglish
    69•10 months ago

    If people think that an IPO means we’re going to … push prices up, push the margins up, push down the feature sets, the only answer we can give is, watch us. Keep watching," he said. “Let’s look at it in 15, 20 years’ time.”

    What a fucking lame answer.

    RasPi was cool at one time, but that time has long since passed.

    • billwashereEnglish
      17•10 months ago

      When their focus changed to more corporate aligned interests they became less cool. Victims of their own success I’d guess.

      But this a politician’s answer. They just didn’t answer the question at all but implied that if we check back in 15 years we’d see that they had “our” best interests at heart.

      Um no company has your back. They are all in it to make as much money as possible. I mean I don’t blame them but I don’t trust the em either.

      • @laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        10•10 months ago

        I do blame them. Success does not require obscene profit. A company like that can actually be both successful and not sell themselves out like that.

        If profit is a company’s only motive, then I’m sorry, but that company has no real value or purpose.

    • @wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      13•10 months ago

      Lol, right?

      The sheer ego to tell your customers to reserve judgement on a massive, company changing event for over a fucking decade! Delusional.

      Especially when they’ve been completely beat out in their market niche for ages and are now only holding on due to brand recognition. It’s easy to have grass roots community support when you were the only product in your niche, but they’ve been coasting on that for ages with no real work to truly stay relevant.

    • @laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      4•10 months ago

      “…watch us [do exactly that]. Keep watching [as we do exactly that and worse]. Let’s look at it in 15, 20 years’ time [long after I’ve cut and run with my golden parachute and left the rotting corpse of this company get picked apart by vulture investors and am long past caring]”

    • experbiaEnglish
      3•10 months ago

      This is the same answer always given by every sell-out right before they sell out their users/customers, and it always collapses into a silent capitulation to enshittification not long thereafter.

      To customers/users of a product or service, IPO should mean only one thing: Last call; FLEE NOW!

    • @gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1•10 months ago

      They were definitely a pioneer in the SBC market. But there are tons of alternatives out there nowadays. And if you are amenable to upcycling, you can get old 1L-class x86 machines from enterprise companies doing dump/replace cycles for dirt cheap on eBay or Craigslist or FB marketplace.

      TL;DR: yes it’s frustrating to see. But as consumers, we have tons of options these days, so it’s not really a catastrophic loss even if Rpi goes down the enshittification path.