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Re: Berkeley Pi: Re: Berkeley Raspberry Pi meeting March 1st -- Jam Time!



On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 8:58 PM tom r lopes <tomrlopes@gmail.com> wrote:
Yeah, pretty much it is only me who posts messages about Berkeley Pi.  
So, sorry for generating all the email traffic :-)  I really hope that I haven't 
been spammy with all this.  Rick's suggestion is good and so from now on 
I'll preface my announcements with "Berkeley Pi:"  That way they will be 
easy to filter or ignore. 

Makes good sense.
Also makes some sense to refer to your (Tom's) 'Berkeley Pi' group as
"Tom's Berkeley Pi group", given that you (Tom) are its founder, its primary
organizer, and clearly its most vocal advocate ;-)

 
I believe Berkeley Pi is an appropriate offshoot of BerkeleyLUG and that 
the Raspberry Pi is relevant to Linux (i'll say more about this later)  
If the will of the people is that it must go then I will separate it, no 
problem.  

Also, and admittedly a nitpicky point, I notice that the (Tom's) March 1st
event posting is entitled 'Berkeley Raspberry Pi meeting March 1st'
as opposed to 'BerkeleyLUG Raspberry meeting March 1st'.

Are you (Tom) perhaps trying to attract all Raspberry Pi users to
your events, even including those not using Linux on their devices??

Because according to the current 'Third-party operating system images for
Raspberry Pi' section of the Downloads page https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/ ,
there are Pi downloads available for the non-Linux OS's Windows 10 IoT Core

As for Windows 10 IOT, seems to be a rebranding of Windows Embedded. Ugh.  And it 
doesn't seem to be a SD card image.  Instead you download and run a Windows program.  
An IOT Dashboard which can write the SD card.  I have't been able to find a video that show
it running.  I found this:  
 My impression is that Windows IOT is a platform for creating Apps for Windows embedded.  
Which would be interesting if you were an experienced Windows programmer.  
Not the accessible "teach programming to kids" which is the Raspberry Foundation's aim. 

OTOH, one reason that comes to mind to avoid bringing Microsoft into the equation of Tom's Raspberry Pi
group is that some of we Linux/BSD users and even developers still might not particularly wish to
encourage Microsoft's quite specific overtures to FOSS developers (a few might even call these unwelcome
"faux-Embracing incursions") to get us/them exposed to Microsoft's own software as well as to that of third-party
companies directly owned and managed by MS.
According to last month's Berkeleyside e-article 'Microsoft opens new office in Berkeley, a first for the East Bay' at
https://www.berkeleyside.com/2020/01/23/microsoft-opens-new-office-in-berkeley-a-first-for-the-east-bay
Microsoft's new Downtown Berkeley location is located less than a mere 3,500 feet from both BerkeleyLUG's and Tom's
Berkeley Pi group's current Cafe Blue Door meetup location.  

The news item of MS's strategic move was also highlighted in the 'Berkeley office opening' section of
Microsoft's recent Bay Area Blog post at https://blogs.microsoft.com/bayarea/2020/01/21/california-bay-area-presence/
Is it really so farfetched that local Microsoft third-party company representatives as well as those of the parent
company will be at least minimally interested in further increasing by whatever means possible, interest in their
products for IoT and embedded systems (e.g., for the Raspberry Pi) to perhaps an admittedly smaller degree than
they clearly are for gathering local talent for their "AI and research-based teams together at [their] new site in Berkeley"???


The Raspberry Pi is a great ambassador for Linux.

OTOH, the Raspberry Pi and similar devices also present visible targets for Microsoft to leverage its own
and its third-party companies' embedded projects+products in order to increase their Mindshare and
Intellectual Property portfolio (and even eventual Marketshare) in that particular niche.

And not to sound overly alarmist, but I think it's entirely conceivable that supposedly "neutral" advocates for
Microsoft's third-party companies or even these companies' IT folks themselves could "crash" local
FOSS-oriented events (e.g., Tom's Raspberry Pi group meetups from the increasingly extensive publicity) in
order to lure FOSS/Linux users+devs into just trying out Microsoft's own use of projects+products on their
optimized platforms rather than toward the reverse case that I'd like to think many of us would rather hope for;
the reverse specifically being we FOSS/Linux users+devs drawing Microsoft's users of their projects+products
into FOSS/Linux instead :-\

-A

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