Swapping flavours (of Pi)

the1lazLeave a comment

I had a bit of a read of a recent blog post on the Raspberry Pi Blog the other day about the recall and rework of PoE HAT due toUSB power issues. It was an interesting read and seems to be a good fix, I suppose things like this happen sometimes and they seem to have done a good job of solving it. However, I was surprised to hear that they were rolling out a replacement for something I don’t remember being recalled, and there was a comment down the bottom of the article noting the lack of communication until now. Further replies from Eben Upton were… not receptive to the feedback? It wasn’t a full on attack, but dismisses the notion citing some examples and refers to the person’s “continuous high-pitched whining” which I thought seemed rude and uncalled for. I read an article about the fix by the guy who originally reported it and the the related forum thread and got a better understanding of the contention.

Basically, the issues I took with it all:

James on the forums was (other than the snipes) very helpful and thankful for the feedback. It just seemed like the response was managed to be as damage-limiting as possible, not talking about it unnecessarily until a triumphant fix could be announced. After seeing this was the story, it was very disappointing to see Eben have a go at someone for calling him out on it. I could understand why it was a sore point and I could see the good work that’s gone into remedying the situation, but I wasn’t happy for the guy commenting to go unsupported and so I posted this:

Hi Eben
A bit of feedback from an onlooker, getting defensive and labeling feedback as “whining” makes for a poor customer experience.
From reading through the forum, it seems that Ewan has continued to be amicable when asking for an update, despite the fact that a blog post has been repeatedly promised for two months and there was no official announcement about the issue for almost 3 months since first reported (for those of use who don’t read The Register or browse the forum).
It’s clear that a lot of good work has gone into solving this, the write-up is excellent, I’ve been a big fan of the Rpi hardware and software. However, this is not the first time I’ve seen Pi Foundation staff attacking people over reasonable questions that have touched raw nerves and it’s really not appropriate.
Unfortunately, the post was not approved by the administrator. In addition, the announcement of the A+ soon followed, so a cynical person might think that the whole thing was iced until there was a bigger announcement to hide under. Overall, it supported the feeling that’s been growing for a few years that the Rpi Foundation has been getting arrogant, that they’ve been riding a wave of success and have been cold or even harsh to anyone not pulling the party line. Which really makes it hard to forego cheaper and better SBCs to continue to buy Raspberry Pis. The only thing left for me is the reliability of their software and gpio support. To be honest, I’m really thinking I might move on.