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FSF Criticizes Raspberry Pi DRM Blocking RAM Upgrades (fsf.org) 73

Posted by EditorDavid from the losing-your-memory dept.
The Free Software Foundation "has never supported Raspberry Pi," writes their deputy directory Sean O'Brien, "as it depends on nonfree software for the boot process, leaving an important part of the computer outside the user's control."

But they're now decrying "an even more intrusive restriction on user freedom" — the binary-blob bootloader changes that limit your ability to upgrade RAM: The restriction is not new: the relevant checks were introduced in the device firmware around 2024. However, these hardware handcuffs have only recently received wider attention. Though a user can desolder the original memory and install electrically compatible RAM, the nonfree firmware may refuse to recognize the additional memory, or simply decide not to boot the computer at all. Even replacement RAM of the same capacity can be rejected.

This is worse than Raspberry Pi's longstanding dependence on nonfree firmware in an important way. It is not only nonfree software, but it is Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), used in this case to prevent the owner of the computer from making a modification that the hardware is otherwise capable of supporting. That distinction matters. Soldered RAM is difficult for most people to replace since it is a physical characteristic of the hardware. In the case of Raspberry Pi boards, users have demonstrated that the hardware itself can be modified successfully....

Raspberry Pi justifies the use of DRM on the basis of being able to identify altered computers. There may be legitimate reasons for wanting to identify such altered computers. Unscrupulous sellers have reportedly replaced memory on lower-capacity boards and resold them as more expensive models, sometimes using unreliable or defective components. But preventing fraud and maintaining quality does not require taking control away from users. A Raspberry Pi could record its original factory configuration in a cryptographically verifiable form. Raspberry Pi could use free software that warns the user when the installed RAM differs from original factory configuration. Raspberry Pi could provide tools allowing buyers to verify what hardware originally shipped with a board. None of those measures requires a software-enforced limit on what an owner may do with the computer...

If compatible hardware can be installed successfully, the manufacturer should not create restrictions to prevent the owner from using it. Restrictions on hardware upgrades are deeply troubling from an organization like Raspberry Pi that has stated their commitment to longevity as a guiding principle. Free software is ultimately about who controls the computer. The user should control it, not the manufacturer that sold it....

The people who own these computers must also have the freedom to modify, repair, and upgrade them, without restrictions imposed by nonfree software limiting their potential.
Hackaday recently argued the restriction was "no big deal." noting there's ways to bypass the restriction" The bootloader is stored in the SPI flash chip, which can be reflashed using the built-in mask ROM over USB and rpiboot, and you are not prevented from flashing older versions of the bootloader, so far... If you have the skills to upgrade your RAM, you most certainly have the skills to downgrade the Raspberry Pi bootloader...

My advice: don't lament Raspberry Pi RAM upgrades, especially given they're only slightly harder to perform now. Very few hackers ever performed them, the main audience for them turned out to be dodgy hardware resellers online... Think of the users that will no longer be fooled by a shady seller on Amazon, especially now that the perverse incentives for board mods and reusing harvested RAM chips are at their highest.
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FSF Criticizes Raspberry Pi DRM Blocking RAM Upgrades More

FSF Criticizes Raspberry Pi DRM Blocking RAM Upgrades

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  • The arguments from the apologists are so dumb... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 18, 2026 @06:53AM (#66380784)

    > especially given they're only slightly harder to perform now.

      > Think of the users that will no longer be fooled by a shady seller on Amazon

    these are incompatible claims. Either ram upgrades are still easy to accomplish -OR- 'dodgy hardware resellers' will no longer be able to continue installing bad ram. You cannot have both.

    Now, of course, raspberry pi *cloud* actually close of that avenue, but they'd have to lock down the bootloader to do so. That's probably their next step. I imagine the apologists at Hackaday would find a way to rationalize that too.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "I imagine the apologists at Hackaday would find a way to rationalize that too."

      But why bother since you just literally rationalized it. Do you read your comments?

      And why does it need rationalization? This is a product THEY SELL, what makes you think your opinion at all? And why does the FSF?

      • Re:The arguments from the apologists are so dumb.. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by karmawarrior ( 311177 ) on Sunday October 18, 2026 @09:10AM (#66380928) Journal

        > This is a product THEY SELL

        Yes, SELL, not RENT. That means the purchaser OWNS the result. And should be able to do whatever the fuck they want with it.

        Piss off with your corporate bootlicking.

        • "Yes, SELL, not RENT. That means the purchaser OWNS the result. And should be able to do whatever the &*_@ they want with it."

          And the argument for Metrovision bypasses comes back to life. No, Raspberry PI owners generally do not expect to defeat the legal licensing of content to avoid the cost of purchasing, but, but. I suspect at the root of this is the RPi Foundation might just be upset that there are boards out there being sold, with mor RTAM than manufactured with, for more money. Money that the RPi

    • The problem they were having was that people would do or sell modifications to the hardware and break it and then return it for warranty repair and it would be difficult to tell whether they were the ones who broke it or not.

      That becomes the hard part. You end up with a bunch of bad actors abusing warranty repair. For a big business like Amazon that's no big deal the rate of warranty repair loss isn't that large overall and it's easy enough to absorb it across other lines of the business. But for a sing

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I heard that their issue was with people doing mods and reselling Pis would mode RAM and flash memory, but using low quality or unsuitable parts, and those parts them failing and the unsuspecting buyer blaming the RPi Foundation for their issues.

        Warranty would be through the seller, at least in Europe.

        Even if the parts don't fail entirely, stuff like RAM can be the source of instability under load, for example. Very annoying to debug, especially on a system like the RPi where it's supposed to be highly cont

    • This is exactly right. If the restriction is so easy to circumvent, the resellers will certainly circumvent it and go right on selling defective computers. It won't accomplish its claimed goal.

      • Well, I thought the point is that such "modified" boards won't come with the latest bootloader, which is a big red flag to the buyer.

        The buyer can ask, "will it come with the latest bootloader?" If the question is avoided or not yes, then the buyer can go to a different seller.
        If the seller lies, then the buyer has grounds to claim that the product is not as described.

        If the buyer then wants to do the chip swap himself, he knows full well that he has to downgrade the bootloader.

        Sounds like a reasonable sol

    • There's nothing to apologise for. There is virtually no use case for doing a RAM upgrade beyond showing daddy how clever you are in doing a RAM upgrade. The cost of the upgrade exceeds buying the correct device in the first place unless you're in the business of scamming people with broken RAM, and upgrading the RAM beyond the maximum supported by the Pi is silly due to it's painful memory controller causing any scenario where you think you may need that much RAM being hugely constrained by bandwidth and CP

    • Re:The arguments from the apologists are so dumb.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Sunday October 18, 2026 @09:08PM (#66381618)

      Either ram upgrades are still easy to accomplish -OR- 'dodgy hardware resellers' will no longer be able to continue installing bad ram. You cannot have both.

      RAM upgrades on a RPi are REALLY hard. You need to have certain hardware and skills to do it. The people who can do it, can also make a killing "upgrading" RAM by using cheap low-quality RAM and selling the new Pi as a more expensive one. The price difference is about $260 from RPi 5 with 1GB to one with 16GB. ($45 for 1GB, $305 for 16GB). If you come across a supply of cheap 16GB units for say, $100 each, you can make a healthy profit selling RPis for $305 that you paid only $145 for. That's $160 in profit and if you have all the equipment to do so, likely takes well under 15 minutes each to do.

      The people will the skills to do this easily are also the ones who can acquire everything cheaply - China, for example, would have all the necessary equipment to make it.

      You can also get "no warranty" RPis officially - they're the "industrial" model and are not for retail sale. (Many pieces of hardware use RPis internally for their controllers because it saves having to deal with SoC manufacturers and such to design the hardware when it's readily available). That's usually how those factories can get a ready supply of RPis for cheap - an industrial RPi 5 1GB would likely be under $40 or so in quantity.

      And now you're counterfeiting Pis.

      The FSF is right to criticize RPi for this, because it goes against their principles, but the FSF also has to realize that counterfeit hardware is a real thing, and an RPi with swapped memory not officially made by RPi is a counterfeit. It's one of the annoyances of real life - counterfeits are a real thing and countermeasures to that usually end up taking rights away. I mean, I'm sure all the pro Right to Repair folks would be glad if their names were put on counterfeit stuff, right? Perhaps someone selling cheap batteries with the iFixit logo. The FSF is harder to counter since their products are purely software, but I'm sure they've been burned before when they buy a product only to realize that the new revision was incompatible.

  • "You cannot upgrade RAM yourself because , sorry for the inconvenience."

    Plenty of competing options will allow it. Vote with your wallets.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tailhook ( 98486 )

      The Raspberry PI wallet vote is dominated by customers that have no reason to toy with replacing RAM chips. They want consistent quality from reputable sellers, and they appreciate that a door has been closed to Asian board rework houses, filling the supply chain with unqualified parts.

      Honestly, that's what I want from Raspberry PI as well. I know the RAM is soldered when I buy it. I have nothing to complain about. When I want something less carefully controlled, cheaper and more flexible, there are a

      • I own several Raspberry Pi devices. From the first gen to the 5th.

        Unfortunately upgradability has often been hampered more due to planned obselence than quality. How much predictable quality is really sacrificed due to allowing RAM upgrades? Perhaps what they need are licensed partners that can do the upgrades...

        • It's an SBC. There's no planned obsolescence about it. You get what you pay for. It's not a device where "upgrades" make any kind of sense. Each component is sitting at the edge of being useless if you upgrade another. E.g. what use case do you have by throwing a 32GB or 64GB chip onto an existing Pi? Whatever you are thinking of running would perform HORENDOUSLY thanks to the incredibly shit memory controller that SoC has. Not every device needs to be upgradable.

          Also there's no "planned obsolescence". That

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tailhook ( 98486 )

          How much predictable quality is really sacrificed due to allowing RAM upgrades?

          If you've ever replaced large surface mount ICs on a PCB, you'll know you don't want to rely on the result for anything that matters, or take the support calls and complaints for the ones that don't work quite right afterwards.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Please list some of the options. Raspberry Pi is the only one I ever hear about. (Of course, I don't go looking, but other good options should be advertised.)

    • "You cannot upgrade RAM yourself because , sorry for the inconvenience."

      You cannot upgrade RAM yourself. No seriously you don't have the skill or equipment. One thing I do credit you with though is brains, the brains to know that buying a Pi and upgrading the RAM is more expensive then buying the correct Pi in the first place. I believe you're smart enough to not want to upgrade RAM on a Pi since it's a stupid idea with virtually no use case other than scamming people by loading it with broken after market RAM.

  • Yes. Think. And the best course of action is to make the 'hacked' board advertise it's hacked state on bootup -- via VGA, blinking board LEDs, and even sound output. Something like, "Warning, my RAM has been hacked." But allow the user to proceed if they accept the risk.

  • Much ado about nothing. (Score:3)

    by topham ( 32406 ) on Sunday October 18, 2026 @08:43AM (#66380892) Homepage

    Upgrading the ram on a Rpi isn't for the feint of heart, if you can upgrade the ram and cannot reset the firmware you should hand it your geek card. If you can't upgrade the ram, don't worry about it. Seriously.

    This is a whole lot of hand wringing over a nothing burger.

    • Upgrading the ram on a Rpi isn't for the feint of heart,

      Sure, for all intensive purposes.

      if you can upgrade the ram and cannot reset the firmware you should hand it your geek card.

      By "reset" you mean "downgrade"

      This is a whole lot of hand wringing over a nothing burger.

      It's OK, you can just say you don't understand the argument.

      • Let me k ow your success rate for removing ram chips with a soldering iron or heat gun and replacing them.

        I've done it. Have you?

        • I've done it. Have you?

          No, nor do I plan to, have fun with that shit. I just want the option to have it repaired with any available part which will fit if I become dependent on it, and without having to worry about whether downgrading the bootloader will cause me some other problem. I've had a couple of raspis and had a bootloader update cause me issues with one of them.

  • But in fact... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Budenny ( 888916 ) on Sunday October 18, 2026 @09:09AM (#66380926)

    Not sure I see the point of the pi any more. For roughly the same price you can now buy a used NUC with a faster processor, enough memory, and SSD storage. Why mess around running stuff from usb sticks? Or even from external extra SSDs? Put the distro of choice on it. And isn't the memory expandable too on the NUC and similar?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by tokul ( 682258 )

      raspberry pi 5 can run from nvme ssd and people were not normally running raspberries from USB sticks. Default boot is SD card.

    • Re:But in fact... (Score:4, Informative)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Sunday October 18, 2026 @09:29AM (#66380946) Homepage Journal

      raspi or similar still makes sense if power consumption is a significant consideration. If you are running from battery you will want to look at ARM. If space is a serious consideration, likewise, like if it absolutely has to be very small. For all other types of install you're definitely better off with a used NUC. If you want some GPIO you can get it with a $3 nano.

      • Or if you don't want to fuck around with random refurbished shit and want a consistent, stable platform. Or if you want to use any of the huge number of hats available easily.

        Not everyone needs the absolute maximum everything at all times and is prepared to sacrifice unlimited time to get it. In fact lot of people don't. And it doesn't even work: you an still buy pi 1's[*] for 20 quid. And the Zero 2W for 15. You won't get a refurbed PC for that, you'll get an ebay special you'll need to refurb yourself.

        It'

        • Or if you don't want to fuck around with random refurbished shit and want a consistent, stable platform.

          What does that have to do with raspi, where every other version they fuck up something basic like USB or power and then clearly don't do any testing before releasing it on the user base?

          You won't get a refurbed PC for that, you'll get an ebay special you'll need to refurb yourself.

          Refurb? What are you talking about? You can buy a used dual-core NUC with 4GB/16GB for $50 any day of the week, and when it shows up you plug it in and load software on it and you're done. You don't have to play any stupid games with bootloaders, you don't have to run special snowflake arm versions of anything, you just inst

          • What does that have to do with raspi,

            Everything? This is, in case you didn't notice, an article about the raspberry pi.

            where every other version they fuck up something basic like USB or power and then clearly don't do any testing before releasing it on the user base?

            I mean... I've been using raspberry pis commercially for years now. Once it's been out for 10 minutes basically all the flaws and workarounds are documented and you can then just keep using the same thing until they stop making them which is usu

    • Re:But in fact... (Score:4, Informative)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Sunday October 18, 2026 @10:12AM (#66380994)

      How many gpio pins does a NUC have available? How about schematics?

      • And how many 5V 15W powersupplies do I need to hook up in series and in parallel to give a NUC the required power?
        Also if you take a NUC and put it in a blender will it fit in a 85mmx50mmx20mm formfactor, or do I need to take it to the local metal workshop and run it through a hydraulic press?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      NUCs are mini desktop computers, the Pi is an embedded computer. The Pi has things like hardware UARTs, I2C, SPI, and so forth, all accessible on a header.

      The other big advantage of the Pi is that it's a well known system, all the major issues have been documented and sometimes resolved, and there is a large ecosystem of low cost add-ons for things like PoE, GNSS, touchscreens, and interfacing with various electronics.

      I would say that the bigger rival to the Pi now is probably ESP32. Where as once you might

      • I use mostly ARM microcontrollers, but I've seen ESP32s mentioned here and there. As I understand it, ESP32s are also microcontrollers, so how would they be rivals to the Pi, which is a microcomputer with accessible ports? Are ESP32s now running Linux? Or are they scaling Home Assistant down to run on the ESP32s?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Their latest model can run full Linux, but the lower end models using FreeRTOS are more than capable of doing a lot of the stuff that people used to use Raspberry Pis for. Stuff like web dashboards, WiFi sensor nodes, WiFi gateways, that kind of thing. What they lack in grunt they make up for by not running a full Linux OS.

          The Home Assistant dashboard is basically just a web page that HA serves and the ESP32 fetches for rendering to an LCD, with a touch interface. It's reasonably responsive, and you can buy

    • For roughly the same price you can now buy a used NUC

      If your use case supports a NUC then you were not in the market for a SBC like the Pi in the first place. Go buy the correct device for your use case. The NUC is definitely not it for many (most?) RPi use cases.

      What you're doing is similar to saying you don't understand why desktops exist because tablets exist.

    • Not sure I see the point of the pi any more. For roughly the same price you can now buy a used NUC

      Bollocks you don't see the point.

      You are claiming you do you really not see the point of buying predictable new $THING when random second hand refurbished $THING exists. Frankly I don't believe you.

    • A few years back, I bought a new Evolve III laptop at Microcenter for $60 - $67 with tax and all.

      Unlike a Pi, which is just a mobo and cpu, the laptop includes: power supply, battery, monitor, keyboard, pointing device, storage, and case.

      A Pi 5 with 4GB Ram costs $70. Is that a great bargain?

    • I'm holding out for a decent Risc-V in the rpi form factor/price. Some IO issues to work out as I understand it, and that's all that's standing in the way of mass production.

  • Is that in Canada, they don't sell a version of the 500 or 500+ with the Canadien version of the keyboard, only the USA keyboard, I hate that.

  • This is beyond stupid, whatever the pseudo-reasoning or attempts at excuses might be. Just for some context: An end of the 90s PowerBook G3 from your oh-so-much-hated Apple had a similar memory chip issue where it wouldnt accept just any SO-DIMMs, only the full-moon-blessed ones.
    That is how stupid and bad this is. We are going back like 30 years in hardware stupidity.

    • That is how stupid and bad this is.

      Agreed. Comparing the Raspberry Pi's soldered on fixed RAM to a compatibility issue with a consumer upgradable SODIMM (what's that last M stand for? was it "module"?) really is stupid and bad.

  • Blocking RAM upgrades is inexcusable. RAM upgrades are the most basic computer upgrade since the dawn of the PC.

  • The whole project clearly only serves to funnel money to Broadcom. Hence a grossly incomplete CPU datasheet, a crappy USB/network setup and amateur level hardware design. And tons of useful idiots cheering for it.

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