[Ned Scott]

True, but there is no rule against getting people to pay you for setting up an open source system.

I'm fairly sure that this violates kickstarter's rules. Kickstarter is oddly strict about tech kickstarter projects.

[nickr]

True, but there is no rule against getting people to pay you for setting up an open source system.

I'm fairly sure that this violates kickstarter's rules. Kickstarter is oddly strict about tech kickstarter projects.

OK I wasn't aware of that. I think the project itself is fine, but the whole kickstarter thing is bizarre.

[Milhouse]

As far as cost goes, what is the total of those components?

Rpi
Case
Power supply
SD card
wifi dongle
HDMI cable.

I could price it in my local currency, but I don't know much about UK suppliers to get the GBP alternatives.

No power supply it would seem, yet an underpowered power supply is often the primary cause of intermittent and hard to reproduce faults with the Pi so I'd have thought a certified PSU would be first on their parts list. But no...

This is what you will receive for the princely sum of £89 (plus £10 shipping outside the UK):

1 x Raspberry Pi
1 x Realtek Wifi Network Adapter
1 x Picotec Case
1 x 8GB SD Card pre-loaded and tested with the Picotec MediaBox software image
1 x HDMI cable
1 x Power Cable

There are already companies in the UK selling Raspberry Pi "kits" (keyboard, mouse, 11n WiFi dongle, USB hub, 4GB SD card with Raspbian, cables, plus 2.1A PSU - but no case - for £80) which is less than the cheapest option offered by this Kickstarter project. So the "unique" aspect of this Kickstarter project comes down to the fact they are flogging a ready configured build of XBMC on an SD card, and charging a significant amount for it - their cheapest 8GB SD/no WiFi option is £10 more than the Maplin kit (sure, the Kickstarter project includes a case - worth about a fiver - but you get far more for less with the Maplin kit), and Kickstarter is up to £40 more expensive if you want the top-of-the range version with 32GB SD Card...

Granted, there are people that will struggle (or simply can't be bothered) to set up XBMC from scratch, and I wouldn't begrudge someone selling a pre-formatted SD card containing XBMC and making a few £'s to cover their costs, after all, anyone who wants to pay to receive open source software is perfectly entitled to do so.

One has to wonder why they haven't taken this route, of selling just the pre-formatted SD cards, and then directing buyers to the freely available (and better value) Raspberry Pi kits. Instead, fleecing naiive punters with overpriced kit, and using Kickstarter to do it, seems entirely wrong.

[Milhouse]

One other thing, reading their reply to Nickr, they claim to have created their own custom build. Now under the terms of the GPL don't they have to make their source code available?

[nickr]

They have to make it available when/if they distribute it (which they don't appear to have done so far).

Although there is some doubt as to whether you have to make the source code available for a build script. So if they, for example, simply have a fancy makefile which builds the system with certain parameters enabled/disabled, they may not have to make the makefile available. Its not a particularly clear area.

[Milhouse]

Although there is some doubt as to whether you have to make the source code available for a build script. So if they, for example, simply have a fancy makefile which builds the system with certain parameters enabled/disabled, they may not have to make the makefile available. Its not a particularly clear area.

Seems pretty clear according to the GPL Violations website:

“The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. ”

This is a quite precise definition. For a typical C program, this translates into all the source code (.c files) plus header files (.h files) plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation.

(my emphasis)

[nickr]

As far as cost goes, what is the total of those components?

Rpi
Case
Power supply
SD card
wifi dongle
HDMI cable.

I could price it in my local currency, but I don't know much about UK suppliers to get the GBP alternatives.

No power supply it would seem, yet an underpowered power supply is often the primary cause of intermittent and hard to reproduce faults with the Pi so I'd have thought a certified PSU would be first on their parts list. But no...

This is what you will receive for the princely sum of £89 (plus £10 shipping outside the UK):

1 x Raspberry Pi
1 x Realtek Wifi Network Adapter
1 x Picotec Case
1 x 8GB SD Card pre-loaded and tested with the Picotec MediaBox software image
1 x HDMI cable
1 x Power Cable

There are already companies in the UK selling Raspberry Pi "kits" (keyboard, mouse, 11n WiFi dongle, USB hub, 4GB SD card with Raspbian, cables, plus 2.1A PSU - but no case - for £80) which is less than the cheapest option offered by this Kickstarter project. So the "unique" aspect of this Kickstarter project comes down to the fact they are flogging a ready configured build of XBMC on an SD card, and charging a significant amount for it - their cheapest 8GB SD/no WiFi option is £10 more than the Maplin kit (sure, the Kickstarter project includes a case - worth about a fiver - but you get far more for less with the Maplin kit), and Kickstarter is up to £40 more expensive if you want the top-of-the range version with 32GB SD Card...

Granted, there are people that will struggle (or simply can't be bothered) to set up XBMC from scratch, and I wouldn't begrudge someone selling a pre-formatted SD card containing XBMC and making a few £'s to cover their costs, after all, anyone who wants to pay to receive open source software is perfectly entitled to do so.

One has to wonder why they haven't taken this route, of selling just the pre-formatted SD cards, and then directing buyers to the freely available (and better value) Raspberry Pi kits. Instead, fleecing naiive punters with overpriced kit, and using Kickstarter to do it, seems entirely wrong.

I hear what you say, but there isn't a lot of margin in it when you are looking at basically £80 worth of hardware. Of course if their kickstart works out and they end up buying in bulk, their costs should be cheaper.

Interesting to see how this update repo will go, but raspbmc do this already (it is manual, but you can, I think, update from the system), and most xbmc addons update by themselves. Also it is a debian system so creating an update system is already done for you by the distro!

[Milhouse]

And there isn't even an IR remote control in this Kickstarter kit, so I guess they're relying on CEC for control... can't wait for the first buyer to complain they can't get CEC to work with their TV, it's far from guaranteed to work with every make/model!

And probably my final comment (for now!), will they be buying the codec licences from the Raspberry Pi Foundation and pre-installing these on each device? Perhaps this is the only possible justification for including the Pi as part of this overpriced deal, rather than telling punters to source their own hardware then inserting a modestly priced pre-formatted SD card when it arrives in the post...