The closed design and closed-source kernel blob are troublesome. We need a completely open source board design similar to the Pi that manufacturers are free to produce without licensing. We could have an organization that does QA and vets individual manufacturers for quality and compliance/conformance with the board's design. The RPi Foundation's choice to remain so closed-source is a bit confusing and puzzling, considering their non-profit and educational mission and goal.
> We need a completely open source board design similar to the Pi that manufacturers are free to produce without licensing.
Unless I'm mistaken, the Beaglebone Black uses chips that are available for purchase from TI (and from which I think you can get datasheets, even as an individual), boots the mainline kernel, and provides CAD files for the board: http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack#Hardware_Files
> The RPi Foundation's choice to remain so closed-source is a bit confusing and puzzling, considering their non-profit and educational mission and goal.
Their founder and key personnel was/are employed by Broadcom. IIRC, essentially Broadcom thought of the Pi as a fun side project and were completely blown away by the demand.
The other problem is that people have written stuff, and loads of that, specifically for the Pi CPU/GPU - which makes a move away from BCM next to impossible:
- anything involving accelerated video isn't easily portable (e.g. omxplayer)
- anything that relies on a given special function of the CPU mapped to a specific GPIO pin might break with another CPU (e.g. extension boards)
- anything that relies on other rpi-specific hardware features (CSI, DSI) will be hard to port, but then again you don't really have a choice with non-usb/i2c camera or display modules...
