> The private companies are funding the foundation.

Except that if you look at their financials, it’s clear that they make very little on them. The sales of Rpis are not how they keep going, it’s all the other activities around it.

> It’s hard to call it leeching when the pi is a comparatively expensive board compared to alternatives

It’s not only about COGs, support is a big ticket in this area, and one that most manufacturers are way behind. Also, yes, there are some cheaper SBCs, but most of them are sold at “ask us for price”, and they aren’t any cheaper, especially at low volumes.

> Except that if you look at their financials, it’s clear that they make very little on them.

As opposed to losing money, which is what happens with consumer sales with at least one model, hence limiting to one per customer

I don't get your argument, something tells me we are talking past each other..

If you are using a model from Raspberry from which they have a margin (essentially all the things on the Compute Module line), that's fine by me, it's great that the foundation can use that as an income stream.

I feel very differently when you use models that are obviously sold at a loss to pad the margins on your product.