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I'd be shocked if there's a company in the world who would prioritize Joe Shmoe wanting to buy 1 widget over BigCorp wanting to buy 10 000. It's economics of scale.

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The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a registered charity to promote computer science education, so if any company were to prioritize Joe Shmoe it would be them.

The Foundation's charitable activities involve funding educational programs for children.[0] Those educational programs are funded via the profits made from selling Raspberry Pis[1], so their charitable goals are aided by selling as many Pis as possible; that's helped by ensuring that reliable corporate customers that place orders in the thousands are never left high and dry.

[0]https://www.raspberrypi.com/about/

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi

The pis are getting sold either way. See op's comment about publicly available pis getting snatched in seconds? RBP doesn't need a deal with a large corporation to sell off their inventory.

Presumably the Foundation sees a future (which is pretty close at hand, if the Foundation is to be believed) where there is no longer a shortage, at which point they would like to continue having industrial customers (which you won't have if you can't guarantee supply). Eben Upton has repeatedly spoken of his desire not to leave companies whose business depends on supply of Pis without stock, thereby endangering their survival.

It's also worth noting that the rapid selling out of hobbyist inventory happens in part because much of the supply is earmarked for industrial customers; we don't actually know if that would still happen if all Pis were sold directly to hobbyists.

The foundation is a small part. The Pis are built and sold by a commercial company that even advertises Pis for industry use: https://www.raspberrypi.com/for-industry/

I've moved on to esp32s and Intel nucs. I'm so angry about the stock issues the last two years they may very well have lost me permanently and I'm definitely going to be paying this forward whenever I talk tech to somebody interested in using raspberry pis.

I'm still looking for 3 pi zero 2s and trying to be fiscally responsible and not get scalped or further contributing to this mess but wow it's been way too long and it's maddening.

I'm not a company, but I've spent a ton of money on pis (including professionally). I was a big champion and supporter convincing everyone I knew to use them for their projects. Now I'm just mad and looking for any alternative I can find. I know I'm not the only one. How can this not have negative long term consequences??

I know they are just a business at the end of the day but I was all in for years. Rational or not I feel completely betrayed.

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