I'm going to use up the hardware I bought in ignorance, and find better stuff for the future.
The schematics aren't so much the issue. It's the lack of documentation for the SoC and other components.
The Raspberry Pi is a great learning platform and I think the Raspberry Pi foundation made the right choice in using the Broadcom parts, even if they are relatively closed. The vast majority of end users aren't using the platform for anything that requires access to the low-level, undocumented parts. Keeping the cost to a minimum was the right choice, IMO.
If someone needed low-level access to the SoC, choosing a Raspberry Pi wouldn't be the right choice anyway, schematics or not.
Exactly; they're basically reselling discount (or below cost) Broadcom SOCs. I'm pretty sure Broadcom will not continue that arrangement!
It makes sense that a bunch of ex-Broadcom engineers looking to make a cheap computer to educate children would use their connections at Broadcom to get an old cheap SoC. The closed schematics and bootloader do not matter to teaching kids scratch and python. I guess it isn't surprising that they haven't changed course since they've been so successful, but it is disappointing.
Compare with the BeagleBone Black, which contains the complete design:
https://github.com/beagleboard/beaglebone-black/blob/master/...