So it looks like the Raspberry Pi Foundation has finally jumped the shark. They hired a surveillance cop as a maker in residence, which is Dumb Move No. 1, but when people on Mastodon began voicing their concerns, whoever runs the account responded with mocking and derision, telling users to "chill" and generally acting like an asshole.

That's not the way to handle this. At all.

As it stands, if the Raspberry Pi Foundation wants to go this way, everyone has every right to stop supporting them. Besides RPis being next to impossible to get ahold of nowadays, thanks to the stupid move of supporting corps over hobbyists (as I understand it), this move of hiring a surveillance cop is a massive slap in the face of the marginalized groups that supported and relied on Raspberry Pis for many projects.

So I'm making my decision: my next SBCs will most likely be Banana Pis or Pine64's RockPro boards. Both are inexpensive and plentiful.

In all good faith, I will not be supporting the Raspberry Pi Foundation for this move, nor will I support them in any future endeavors, but also, I implore people to not just dump out your Raspberry Pis; creating e-waste in protest doesn't help.

Donate your Pis, or just put them away if you don't want to use them any longer. Find homes for them; throwing them out when they're hard for others to find is wasteful and the wrong message to send.

I'll continue to use my Pis, because I bought or received them long before this mess. But I will not be giving them any more of my money.

That's how you protest their actions: by closing your wallet to them.

#RaspberryPi