> An IPO of Raspberry Pi Trading Ltd would unlock a lot of funds
It would also make every decision that the company makes from here going forward one of fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders. For a project rooted in affordable open-source hardware/software that's a major conflict of interest.
I get that "Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd" is not the Raspberry Pi Foundation, but it is wholly owned by the foundation as a subsidiary. IMO, it'd be of major concern if any RPI business entities went public.
As long as the company can make a reasonable argument that it's in the long term interest of shareholders, they can do all sorts of things. It just has to be a reasonable business expense.
Except it might not be in shareholders' best interests to sell at the current prices, especially in the middle of a chip shortage. The presence of a scalping secondary market is at least partial evidence that the market will support higher prices.
Either way, your "as long as..." conditional statement may be logically consistent, but the condition is by no means guaranteed to be met.
Who said lawsuit? It doesn't have to be a lawsuit. Shareholders can put pressure on the company in a few ways. And in any case, I'm talking about shareholders' interests, not the (sometimes ineffective) steps they can take to remedy conflicts with corporate leadership.
Nonetheless, a lawsuit is possible as well. Foregoing profits in favor of ideology could conceivably be a breach of fiduciary responsibility, a primary cause of shareholder lawsuits. You may be right that there has never been a lawsuit like this about too-low prices, but I simply don't know. And unless you're a corporate lawyer with extensive shareholder lawsuit experience-- or happen to have some legal experience and a subscription to something like Westlaw-- then you are making an unfounded guess.
I have a friend w/ Westlaw access, among other databases, but I'm not willing to ask them to spend a few hours researching the issue to see if there's every been such a case, or try to find one myself. But in the history of corporate lawsuits it certainly wouldn't surprise me. There is a body of caselaw that could encompass it, predatory pricing (https://www.justice.gov/atr/predatory-pricing-strategic-theo...). Selling significantly below the market-clearing rate demonstrated by scalper prices might provide some ammunition for this claim, but IANAL so I won't speculate further on its actual applicability.
If you have more direct expertise or knowledge of the caselaw there I'm happy to hear it. I think, absent completely recalcitrant corporate leadership on the issue, shareholders would force the issue outside of the courtroom.
It would also make every decision that the company makes from here going forward one of fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders. For a project rooted in affordable open-source hardware/software that's a major conflict of interest.
I get that "Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd" is not the Raspberry Pi Foundation, but it is wholly owned by the foundation as a subsidiary. IMO, it'd be of major concern if any RPI business entities went public.