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On one hand - it makes sense to push for more visibility - to test the depths of their commitment to right-to-repair. On the other hand - being overly critical

On one hand - it makes sense to push for more visibility - to test the depths of their commitment to right-to-repair. On the other hand - being overly critical about a new entrant that is attempting to address the right-to-repair market for not getting everything perfect from the get go might send the wrong signals about the right-to-repair market to the rest of the industry. It seems like a delicate balance might be wise. Having module level repairability for LCD panels, connectors, drivers, memory is a pretty big step relative to the other OEMs. Perhaps the best analogy would be Raspberry Pi schematics which are also reduced [1] and IMHO, the RPi has generally been a plus for the open source hardware/software community. Similarly I could definitely see Intel having some trade secrets as you get closer the CPU. [1] https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rpi4/raspberry-pi-4-reduced-schematics.pdf https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rpi4/raspberry-pi-4-reduc...

nrp 4y ago
Yep, we absolutely understand and respect Louis and community members' requests for full schematics, and we appreciate the folks who extend understanding as we work through constraints (including Louis as noted in that last video). We're continuing to make as much open as we can, and we're adding to that list as we go: * Mainboard partial schematics, drawings, and pinouts: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Mainboard https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Mainboard * Expansion Card reference designs: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionCards https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionCards * Embedded Controller firmware: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController On the list of things that we are exploring ways to improve on in the future: * More of the schematics, including of modules beyond the Mainboards. * Moving to open UEFI/BIOS solutions.
userbinator 4y ago
Similarly I could definitely see Intel having some trade secrets as you get closer the CPU. If they're "secrets", they're probably one of the worst-kept in the industry. You can already find plenty of other, probably leaked, schematics of laptops using the same if not very similar platform. They are all based on reference designs from Intel, after all. It's inevitable that yours will leak too, hopefully sooner rather than later. Hence I am strongly siding with the "marketing BS" people here. Claiming to be so strongly in support of RtR, and then turning around and keeping the barely-existing artificial moat up, is practically not much better than all the other laptops that already have schematics available.
- Palomides 4y ago
  do you think Intel's lawyers would accept that argument? getting blacklisted (or sued) by Intel would be catastrophic for Framework
  - userbinator 4y ago
    Hopefully Intel's lawyers realise that suing its customers who are buying its products would be a bad idea. If anything, getting Intel to open up more documentation --- like it used to have --- would increase sales and community reputation. Especially with its diminishing performance lead, and the rise of performant but even more horribly proprietary ARM SoCs, opening up seems to make even more sense. Remember that x86 and the PC architecture dominated the computing industry because it was open.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
      Hopefully may or may not be sufficient for them to bet the farm on. Knowingly breaching a contract you've already invested many dollars and hours building and understanding, against the advice of your legal council, seems risky.
      - somethoughts 4y ago
        Additionally - while the legacy bemoth Intel is getting onboard with open source schematics (and figuring out its strategy to open source the VHDL for its 12th gen core to compete against RISC-V - perhaps now that Gelsinger who is more technical than the previous CEO - there is some hope!) -- the question is whether we'd rather see a product like Framework make inroads despite the roadblocks and build up marketshare to further the case toward right to repair.
      - icelancer 4y ago
        Exactly. It's really easy to make speculative quasi-legal decisions when it's not your company.
  - somethoughts 4y ago
npunt 4y ago
This is the challenge of trying to do good - no matter how much better you are than the default, for some subset of users you will never be good enough, and they’ll complain just as loudly about you as they do the default (far worse) option. Unrealistic purity tests ruin all sorts of attempts to make the world a better place. We should celebrate attempts to change the status quo.
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  The problem I have is that if these requests are unrealistic, they should just say that. As far as I can tell, what they're currently doing requires more effort to vet repair shops and create an NDA than if they just dumped the schematics online. Now, maybe there's a great reason for this. Maybe they're under NDA and can't reveal part of the schematics. Maybe releasing these schematics would make it super easy for a competitor to completely steal everything. Maybe they are going to release the full schematics and we're waiting on their engineering team and legal team to review them. The problem here is that Framework hasn't communicated any of this. Every time they're asked they don't seem to give any reason and just dodge around with "we'd love to release the full schematics". Well, why haven't you then? Please tell us.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
    One might even imagine someone would write something like this in an effort to reinforce the parents the point. The strongest interpretation of "we'd love to release the full schematics" the subtext: but we can't / don't want to due to "reasons*, none of which are likely to satisfy everyone, so we'll try to avoid that discussion as it would help distract us all rather than getting on with our goals.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - somethoughts 4y ago
      I feel its likely the marketing verbiage w.r.t. repairability was targeting the average "prosumer level repairability" - which is probably more closer to an iFixit level of repairability (i.e. more on the torx screw and less on the solder/depop spectrum of repair) [1]. That said in response to these HN and Youtube threads - perhaps they could update it to be more specific about their definition of repairability as well as why schematics will be or can't be released. In the future - if Intel is the issue - it might be smart to design some additional modularity and relegate the proprietary Intel stuff to some sort of system on module (like the RPi4 Compute Module) and increase the amount of open source able main board. [1] https://www.ifixit.com https://www.ifixit.com
retcon 4y ago
Module level repair novel you say? Parts Removal and Replacement Videos - PCs and Smart Devices - Lenovo Support GB https://support.lenovo.com/gb/en/solutions/ht505031-parts-removal-and-replacement-videos-pcs-and-smart-devices https://support.lenovo.com/gb/en/solutions/ht505031-parts-re...
- somethoughts 4y ago
  Interesting. That said - its one thing to have a knowledge base likely targeted toward corporate IT teams with direct access to order-able parts via Lenovo value added resellers and another to put it on the landing page for a consumer facing laptop. It'd be a huge win in fact for right to repair if Lenovo did do this in response to Framework.
  - userbinator 4y ago
    Thinkpads have always been very repairable at the module level since they were still called IBM Thinkpads. You can also find schematics for them on other sites.

nrp 4y ago

Yep, we absolutely understand and respect Louis and community members' requests for full schematics, and we appreciate the folks who extend understanding as we work through constraints (including Louis as noted in that last video). We're continuing to make as much open as we can, and we're adding to that list as we go: * Mainboard partial schematics, drawings, and pinouts: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Mainboard https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Mainboard * Expansion Card reference designs: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionCards https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionCards * Embedded Controller firmware: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController On the list of things that we are exploring ways to improve on in the future: * More of the schematics, including of modules beyond the Mainboards. * Moving to open UEFI/BIOS solutions.

userbinator 4y ago

Similarly I could definitely see Intel having some trade secrets as you get closer the CPU. If they're "secrets", they're probably one of the worst-kept in the industry. You can already find plenty of other, probably leaked, schematics of laptops using the same if not very similar platform. They are all based on reference designs from Intel, after all. It's inevitable that yours will leak too, hopefully sooner rather than later. Hence I am strongly siding with the "marketing BS" people here. Claiming to be so strongly in support of RtR, and then turning around and keeping the barely-existing artificial moat up, is practically not much better than all the other laptops that already have schematics available.

Palomides 4y ago
do you think Intel's lawyers would accept that argument? getting blacklisted (or sued) by Intel would be catastrophic for Framework
- userbinator 4y ago
  Hopefully Intel's lawyers realise that suing its customers who are buying its products would be a bad idea. If anything, getting Intel to open up more documentation --- like it used to have --- would increase sales and community reputation. Especially with its diminishing performance lead, and the rise of performant but even more horribly proprietary ARM SoCs, opening up seems to make even more sense. Remember that x86 and the PC architecture dominated the computing industry because it was open.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
    Hopefully may or may not be sufficient for them to bet the farm on. Knowingly breaching a contract you've already invested many dollars and hours building and understanding, against the advice of your legal council, seems risky.
    - somethoughts 4y ago
      Additionally - while the legacy bemoth Intel is getting onboard with open source schematics (and figuring out its strategy to open source the VHDL for its 12th gen core to compete against RISC-V - perhaps now that Gelsinger who is more technical than the previous CEO - there is some hope!) -- the question is whether we'd rather see a product like Framework make inroads despite the roadblocks and build up marketshare to further the case toward right to repair.
    - icelancer 4y ago
      Exactly. It's really easy to make speculative quasi-legal decisions when it's not your company.
- somethoughts 4y ago

npunt 4y ago

This is the challenge of trying to do good - no matter how much better you are than the default, for some subset of users you will never be good enough, and they’ll complain just as loudly about you as they do the default (far worse) option. Unrealistic purity tests ruin all sorts of attempts to make the world a better place. We should celebrate attempts to change the status quo.

cmeacham98 4y ago
The problem I have is that if these requests are unrealistic, they should just say that. As far as I can tell, what they're currently doing requires more effort to vet repair shops and create an NDA than if they just dumped the schematics online. Now, maybe there's a great reason for this. Maybe they're under NDA and can't reveal part of the schematics. Maybe releasing these schematics would make it super easy for a competitor to completely steal everything. Maybe they are going to release the full schematics and we're waiting on their engineering team and legal team to review them. The problem here is that Framework hasn't communicated any of this. Every time they're asked they don't seem to give any reason and just dodge around with "we'd love to release the full schematics". Well, why haven't you then? Please tell us.
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
  One might even imagine someone would write something like this in an effort to reinforce the parents the point. The strongest interpretation of "we'd love to release the full schematics" the subtext: but we can't / don't want to due to "reasons*, none of which are likely to satisfy everyone, so we'll try to avoid that discussion as it would help distract us all rather than getting on with our goals.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - somethoughts 4y ago
    I feel its likely the marketing verbiage w.r.t. repairability was targeting the average "prosumer level repairability" - which is probably more closer to an iFixit level of repairability (i.e. more on the torx screw and less on the solder/depop spectrum of repair) [1]. That said in response to these HN and Youtube threads - perhaps they could update it to be more specific about their definition of repairability as well as why schematics will be or can't be released. In the future - if Intel is the issue - it might be smart to design some additional modularity and relegate the proprietary Intel stuff to some sort of system on module (like the RPi4 Compute Module) and increase the amount of open source able main board. [1] https://www.ifixit.com https://www.ifixit.com

retcon 4y ago

Module level repair novel you say? Parts Removal and Replacement Videos - PCs and Smart Devices - Lenovo Support GB https://support.lenovo.com/gb/en/solutions/ht505031-parts-removal-and-replacement-videos-pcs-and-smart-devices https://support.lenovo.com/gb/en/solutions/ht505031-parts-re...

somethoughts 4y ago
Interesting. That said - its one thing to have a knowledge base likely targeted toward corporate IT teams with direct access to order-able parts via Lenovo value added resellers and another to put it on the landing page for a consumer facing laptop. It'd be a huge win in fact for right to repair if Lenovo did do this in response to Framework.
- userbinator 4y ago
  Thinkpads have always been very repairable at the module level since they were still called IBM Thinkpads. You can also find schematics for them on other sites.