Bonum Certa Men Certa

[Video] ARM's Stake in Raspberry Pi Ltd is Part of a Trend of Large-Scale Corporate Ownership, Less Community Role

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 07, 2023

Video download link | md5sum 95ea33b4df48cbf6e96402b58a598489
A Corporate ARM
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Preview for A Corporate ARM

THE video above deals primarily with the ARM investment in Raspberry Pi Ltd.

For those who have not paid close enough attention, as per the official statement from the official site and some media coverage (e.g. [1-3]), ARM has planted a long stake in the territories of Raspberry Pi Ltd.

Many of the reports (below we have just a subset of Daily Links) did not add any new information; they mostly parroted a bunch of official quotes and did not dig any further.

This latest development, alongside Google "sponsorship" or "partnership" as announced some days ago, can sort of add up. Then add up the unrest caused by the Sony partnership, which apparently caused supply shortages and this meant higher pricing for the rest of us. Going back to 2021 there's the Microsoft spyware (a blunder we were first to expose) and despite me owning and currently using two Raspberry Pi 4 devices (one is a 400, i.e. keyboard-enclosed) I am a little hesitant to order another. Sony, ARM, Google, and the 2021 Visual Studio Code "deal"... a bit too much.

While I cannot figure out the true motives of ARM (what they say in the open is usually "optics" or nice-sounding PR) this reminds me that a decade and a half ago Microsoft (MSFT) bought about 5% stake in FB (now Meta). There were speculations about this in Wall Street circles as they said it was supposed to prevent a takeover by Google (GOOG) when it was growing fast and later popularised Chrome, making it a gateway to the Web (most major browsers are now based on Chromium).

Raspberry Pi used to feel like a 'family business' with a large community of enthusiasts around it (like Ubuntu at the very start), but if it lets itself be controlled or financially steered by DRM pushers, then it might end us like OLPC.

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Arm makes strategic investment in Raspberry Pi

    Arm has just acquired a minority stake in Raspberry Pi through a strategic investment in order “to deliver critical solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT) developer community.” Paul Williamson, SVP and GM, Internet of Things Line of Business, Arm explains the rationale behind the investment: [...]

  2. Arm picks up a minority stake in Raspberry Pi

    It seems that Arm wants to gain more of a foothold in the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. "With the rapid growth of edge and endpoint AI applications, platforms like those from Raspberry Pi, built on Arm, are critical to driving the adoption of high-performance IoT devices globally by enabling developers to innovate faster and more easily," Paul Williamson, senior vice-president and general manager of Arm's IoT division, said in a statement.

  3. Arm grabs a minority slice of Raspberry Pi • The Register

    Since 2012, the maker of the currently best-selling British computer has released a number of Raspberry Pi models in different form factors. Last month, it launched the Raspberry Pi 5, which brought several notable improvements – including a much faster quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 processor running at 2.4GHz, better graphics and more robust I/O.

    Over the past few years these devices have also become popular for use in industrial applications at the edge. As of 2020, more than half of all Raspberry Pi units were being deployed in industrial and commercial settings. This no doubt factored into Arm's decision to invest.

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Audio: Julian Assange Tells US Judge That Espionage Act and First Amendment Contradict One Another, But Pleads Guilty (to Save His Life)
Have a listen to Julian Assange and the judge in Saipan
How to Help Pay Assange Debt (£520,000 Plane Bill and Beyond)
Budget travel was not permitted
Wikipedia Co-Founder (Not Wales) Expresses Support for Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange, Says Assange Will Probably Continue
probably exactly the sort of thing that the US prosecutors did not want
Windows in Åland Islands: From 100% to Less Than Half
Åland Islands lost the sense of urgency to move to GNU/Linux
Not Just Slow News But Also Late News (Julian Assange Landing in Thailand)
Why did AP take so long (nearly a week) to release these?
[Meme] Smart Alec Poettering
How many Microsofters can the Debian Project withstand?
Getting Rid of Microsoft Does Not Go Far Enough
Microsoft already has many problems. One day Microsoft won't exist anymore. But that does not guarantee users' freedom.
Alyssa Rosenzweig's LibrePlanet Talk About Freeing the Apple GPU
Alyssa Rosenzweig is the graphics witch behind the reverse-engineered drivers for the Apple GPU. She previously led Panfrost, the free drivers for Arm Mali GPUs powering devices like the Pinebook Pro. She graduated in 2023 with a Computer Science degree from the University of Toronto and now writes free software full-time.
Links 30/06/2024: LLMs Under Fire and Dictatorship of the Old
Links for the day
 
[Meme] Wayland at Every Cost
Fedora DEI and Wayland
RMS: "I am very glad for Assange for being out of prison, but I am alarmed that the danger of being treated similarly will face other journalists and publishers in the future"
what RMS said about the release of Julian Assange
What Richard Stallman (RMS) Thinks of Paying With Cash or 'Cashless Society'
RMS: Don't be tracked
No Discrimination Allowed Against People Who Pay With Cash
City of Philadelphia on cash
Anthony Albanes: Assange's "arrival home ends a long running legal process. [...] We'll have meetings about AUKUS and other arrangements over coming days as well."
Official transcript
4.04 Linux Not Found, No Such Agency (NSA)
The CoCs never failed Microsoft
Julian Assange Turns 53 in a Couple of Days, Give Him the Gift of Freedom From Debt
Julian Assange turns 53 on Wednesday
IBM's Abandonment of Disabled People (Orca and Wayland Incompatibility) Has Basically Killed Their "DEI" Channel (Room)
The "DEI" channel (Matrix room) as been silent for 4 days
[Meme] Just Because You Throw Money at Lawyers Doesn't Mean You'll Win
Welcome to the second half of 2024
Paulo Henrique Santana (Collabora) on the Debian Brazil Community
There was similar material in DebConf22
Making the Wikileaks Site More Active Again (and Gradually Exiting "X" or Other Social Control Media)
As soon as Assange got kidnapped the Wikileaks Web site reached a near-standstill
Marco Calegaro on Hacking Art Into a Community
talk by Marco Calegaro
Links 01/07/2024: Chokecherry Leaf and Agile Manifesto
Links for the day
Johannes Åsgård on Making the Raspberry Pi More Free With librerpi
Johannes (also known as dolphinana)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 30, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, June 30, 2024
200 This Week
Monday started with 40 articles/pages and this is #200
Press Complicity and Public Apathy All Along Enabled 14 Years of Illegal, Arbitrary Detention and Coercion Into Plea Bargain of Julian Assange on Brink of Death
They basically blackmailed him into letting the US 'win' the argument
At the End Journalism a Crime (If It Involves Accessing or Gaining Access to Documents Marked "Confidential" or "Classified" by Those Looking to Hide Their Misconduct/Crimes)
At least in the US, especially where the imperialism is at stake
Links 30/06/2024: Tensions in Korea and Japan, Criminalisation of Sleeping Outdoors
Links for the day
100% Slop/Spam From linuxsecurity.com
This is the kind of stuff that's killing the Web faster
Gemini Links 30/06/2024: Murdoch and Ideal OS
Links for the day
In the First 6 Months of 2024 Thailand Moved to GNU/Linux, Not to Windows Vista 11
maybe users moved from Vista 10 and 11 to GNU/Linux, seeing where Microsoft was heading with forced hardware "upgrades"
Eko K. A. Owen, New Outreach and Communications Coordinator for the FSF
Nice to see many new additions to the FSF's team
Microsoft Has Slaves and Enablers, Not Partners
Obligatory meme too
Tobias Platen Covered Freedom-To-Play Games in LibrePlanet 2024
Freedom-To-Play games using Taler
[Meme] Opening a 'Webapp' With 'Only' 4 GB of RAM
Until 2020 none of my PCs ever had more than 2 GB of RAM
Destination 'Five Percent'
We reckon GNU/Linux can break the 5% barrier some time by the end of this year, even without counting Chromebooks
A Crisis of Online Journalism
Almost a week ago a journalist was forced to plead guilty for an act of journalism
Germany One of Many Countries Where Microsoft's Bing Lost Market Share After All That LLM Nonsense (Bing Chat and Further Rebrands/Renames)
openai.com traffic plunged 60% last month
Microsoft’s Latest Antitrust Scrutiny
4 new stories
Microsoft Layoffs, Mass Plagiarism, and More
outrage included
[Meme] Walking Outside the Guardrails of the Walled Gardens Built by Monopolies
So-called "advertiser-unfriendly" material was never a problem for Wikileaks
GNU/Linux Climbed 0.25% This Month (in statCounter)
Around midday on Tuesday we'll start seeing preliminary data for July
Ilya Gulko Introduces Pollyanna
"Pollyanna is a web framework that makes it easy to create your own libre social space, such as a social network or blog."
'FSFE': Underage Labour, GAFAM Fronting, and Identity Theft to Undermine the FSF's Current Fundraiser
looking to raise funds at the same time as the FSF
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 29, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, June 29, 2024
Links 29/06/2024: Astronauts at Risk, Ukraine Updates
Links for the day
Fedora and Red Hat Leftovers
mostly redhat.com
Microsoft is Now Googlebombing or Spamming 'Open Source' and 'Linux' to Promote Proprietary Surveillance, Azure
Notice the title and the image, what's being promoted etc.
Seychelles: GNU/Linux Doing OK
Seychelles cannot be considered poor
This War Crime Footage, Nothing Political Per Se, Is What They Made Julian Assange Plead Guilty To (War Criminals Not Convicted, Only Those Who Expose Them)
Wikileaks' Julian Assange: Exposing the US Military Crimes
Gemini Protocol Isn't Even Remotely "Dead"
"Lupa knows of 505,000 (half a million!) working Gemini URLs at present, up from about 425,000 this time last year"
About 10 New Free Software Foundation (FSF) Members Per Day
The total changed from 46 to 47 while typing the article
20 Years Passed, Let's Go Even Faster Now
We are hoping to bring more original stories
Vista 11 Adoption Unusually Low in Germany and It's Going Down, Not Up
This is not happening only in Germany
Kevin Korte on Computers Being Allowed to Make Decisions Based on Cryptic Algorithms and Proprietary/Secret Data
It uses buzzwords where none are needed
[Meme] Garbage In, Garbage Out (linuxsecurity.com)
It is neither Linux nor security, just chatbot-generated slop
Microsoft-Invaded CISA Spreads Anti-Free Software FUD (as If Proprietary Software Has No Memory Safety Issues), Brittany Day Uses Chatbots to Amplify and Permutate the Microsoft FUD
linuxsecurity.com became an anti-Linux spam site
Microsoft Laying Off Staff in an Act of Retaliation and Union-Busting
retaliatory layoffs at Microsoft
Gemini Links 29/06/2024: Content Drowning in 'Goo' and LLM Slop
Links for the day
Windows Lost Almost 92% Market Share in Egypt
From over 99% to just over 7%
In Ecuador, GNU/Linux Adoption Surged From Under 1% to Over 4% in About 3 Years
Not even counting Chromebooks
LibrePlanet: Cultivating Backups (of Recordings)
an appeal to recover some of these talks
Microsoft/Windows Machines Are Turned Off (or Windows Deleted/Decommissioned) in Web Servers, as the "Market Share" Collapse Continues
Taking full history into account, this is a decrease of over 90% in some cases
Corwin Brust Hosting Freedom: A Behind-the-scenes Tour With the GNU Savannah Hackers
"the "smiling faces" behind it."
Android at 90% or More in Chad
Windows below 2%
David Wilson: Cultivating a Welcoming Free Software Community That Lasts
"a feeling of shared ownership for all users."
Julian Assange Might Continue Wikileaks, But Certainly Not Yet (Recovery Time Needed)
And probably at a symbolic capacity only
Bringing in 12 Santas and Taking 13 Out (Old Interview With Julian Assange)
Julian Assange's life inside the Ecuadorian embassy
Neil Plotnick on GNU/Linux in the High School Classroom
uploaded to the LibrePlanet instance of MediaGoblin
Asia Appears to be Fastest to Adopt GNU/Linux
the home of a considerable majority of the world's population
Alexandre Oliva's LibrePlanet 2024 Talk About "Software Enshittification"
in spite of technical difficulties encountered while recording
What They Used to Do With Mono They Now Do With Systemd (Lower and Deeper Down Than Userspace)
Now we have a project started primarily by Red Hat (and managed by Microsoft GitHub, which is proprietary) being managed by Microsoft and primarily serving Microsoft and IBM
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 28, 2024
IRC logs for Friday, June 28, 2024