"I really hope Raspberry Pi is open and we can all get down to the metal on it but if Broadcom is involved, somehow I doubt it will be."
If you look at open-source hardware projects, they usually sink because the specced components aren't available any more, but the Raspberry PI is as damn near generic as you can get. Ethernet controllers and USB controllers are pretty generic. ARM may be a propietary design, but it's licensable and so heavily commoditised. This means that they should be able to revise the hardware as the market changes and use components from other suppliers without invalidating the existing codebase and forking the system (and userbase).
The only truly closed component is the GPU. There really is no such thing as a generic GPU on the market, and GPU technology is changing rapidly. Mandating Open GL makes any GPU generic, and this means that they can change the GPU later when the current model is discontinued or they can negotiate a better price with another supplier.
On the other hand, if the GPU's native APIs were available, you can be damned sure that developers would use them, and software would become irrevocably tied to the current version of the hardware, which would destroy the long-term potential of the project.
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Using APIs has its benefits...
"I really hope Raspberry Pi is open and we can all get down to the metal on it but if Broadcom is involved, somehow I doubt it will be."
If you look at open-source hardware projects, they usually sink because the specced components aren't available any more, but the Raspberry PI is as damn near generic as you can get. Ethernet controllers and USB controllers are pretty generic. ARM may be a propietary design, but it's licensable and so heavily commoditised. This means that they should be able to revise the hardware as the market changes and use components from other suppliers without invalidating the existing codebase and forking the system (and userbase).
The only truly closed component is the GPU. There really is no such thing as a generic GPU on the market, and GPU technology is changing rapidly. Mandating Open GL makes any GPU generic, and this means that they can change the GPU later when the current model is discontinued or they can negotiate a better price with another supplier.
On the other hand, if the GPU's native APIs were available, you can be damned sure that developers would use them, and software would become irrevocably tied to the current version of the hardware, which would destroy the long-term potential of the project.