linguofreak wrote:
In short, they beat the capitalist West at its own game because, in having strong IP law, the capitalist West wasn't actually playing its own game.
Nobody forced them to move the production to China, but their own greed (as profit motive is indeed their game). They shouldn't have let the Chinese to manufacture and have the blueprints in the first place, there would be no IP issue at all.
Same stands for other electronics as well, the US factories weren't good enough for Apple, so they moved the iPhone production overseas and look at now, Xiaomi and the others all producting not just cheaper, but much better smartphones.
And to be honest, if I could buy a Chinese board reliably with shipping guarantee and warranty, then I would. With Rpi the local reseller takes the risk (of lost package and faulty product), not me, which is very important, but that's all. I suppose I'm not alone with this, that's why the Rpi has the most documentation and biggest community of all the micro-boards. For example, have you ever tried to get a detailed description of the boot sequence of (let's say) an OrangePi? On the other hand, googling for "raspberry pi boot sequence" results in literally dozens of useful pages and tutorial videos. (Yes I know they supposed to be compatible with the RPi boards, but for a newbie that's not obvious at all.)
Cheers,
bzt