5 ms·

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

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
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    It seems likely that the 'module' would just cover the entire space of the board as-is if they did this with a modern intel system anyways, especially when there's also SODIMM module slots, an m.2 slot, and 4 full tb4 ports on the board. All those high speed bus interfaces are probably tied directly into the CPU, the chipset, or both, and so are largely gonna be covered by any confidentiality agreement intel imposes on vendors of those parts. The Pi4 CM is a much more modest device by comparison. It has no ram expansion and only a few lanes of PCIe, USB3, and some other fairly standard IO interfaces otherwise. Realistically, the frame.work mainboard is the compute module. You plug it into the equivalent of a CM carrier board with the TB4 ports.
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  It's not just about the reason, but other details too. Does "we'd love to release them" mean "we just mean more time", "there's a 50/50 chance we'll be able to release them", or "we'd love to but it's a long shot". If they are going to come out, will it be in weeks, months, or years?
  - needle0 4y ago
    Them not mentioning it, despite mentioning it making their optics better, pretty much seem to point to the NDA not even letting them discuss the stuff you stated.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > due to "reasons*, none of which are likely to satisfy everyone, so we'll try to avoid that discussion Being so vague and listing no reasons doesn't seem helpful to me.
- tyrfing 4y ago
  The strongest and most likely interpretation is that they simply don't own the IP, and it's based on a licensed reference design. It makes zero sense for a startup like this to have done all of it from scratch - just copy everything possible and innovate the actually interesting parts. If they don't own the design, they can't say that due to NDAs, and the best they can do is a maximally broad interpretation of "repair shop".
  - moring 4y ago
    IMHO, the best they can do is being honest about what they can't say due to an NDA. For example, if they can't say that they don't own the design, they might say "due to an NDA we cannot say who owns the design". This goes a long way to earn trust.
    - jimnotgym 4y ago
      It depends if the NDA allows them to discuss it at all!
      - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        These has to be a limit to this madness, can I get an NDA that does not let you state your name to anyone
        vel0city 4y ago
        There are limits to contracts in the law. There would have to be some form of consideration to that contract. If you gave me a million dollars a year but I just can't use my current legal name in casual conversation, I'd take that contract. If you just wrote a contract that said "you can't use your name, you get nothing" its an unenforceable contract under US (and most of the developed world's) contract laws under the principle of consideration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration
    - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
donthellbanme 4y ago
The veting of repair shops is a ploy. The watch industry used to vet repair Watch Repair shops on the guise of "Quality Assurance". They would require Watchmakers buy their expensive cleaning machines, and a bunch of other pricy tooling, and requirements; in order to procure parts. 90% of watchmakers couldn't get a parts accout, and the watch companies loved it. it meant more after sales/warranty business. This was because they didn't want to sell parts to anyone. They wanted to do the repairs For a few years, certain Watchmakers kept up with the demands from Rolex, and The Swatch Group. We were just happy to be able to get parts. About 15 years ago the watch companies just decided not to sell parts to anyone. That whole Vertical Intregtation consumer ripoff. I am very leary of any company that wants to vet their repair shops for anything, other than maybe medical equipment. They will supply the schematics, but they don't want to make it easy. (I'm pretty sure I'm hellbanned again?)
- onli 4y ago
  It is not them though, they clearly just follow rules here that they have to obey. But I think it is a great idea to compare it with the watch market - independent repair shops there have neven seen like a bad idea, and the schematics are pretty much always open - in that the movement is just there, accessible - and the watches are copyable. Which happens a lot though - might not be the most convincing argument if that were the fear.
autoexec 4y ago
> 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. I guess I'd question 'fear of competitors' being a "good" reason, but I'd agree with you otherwise. Regardless of what the need for secrecy is, unless it's "we're forbidden by the state" and there's some kind of national security letter involved or "We're doing something illegal and we'd get sued if it were known to the public", why not just tell the public why they can't release the full schematics? What else would prevent someone from talking about why they couldn't talk about something? Refusing to even explain themselves just makes it all seem more suspicious.
- vel0city 4y ago
  Sometimes NDAs prevent even revealing the scope of the NDA, because knowing the scopes of things is then potentially exposing information a party doesn't want known by others. Sure, maybe Framework could just go and state those things, but they're potentially burning their relationships with key partners that might be necessary to make the product at the moment. I'm not arguing this is a good thing, just trying to share some perspective.

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
- stormbrew 4y ago
  It seems likely that the 'module' would just cover the entire space of the board as-is if they did this with a modern intel system anyways, especially when there's also SODIMM module slots, an m.2 slot, and 4 full tb4 ports on the board. All those high speed bus interfaces are probably tied directly into the CPU, the chipset, or both, and so are largely gonna be covered by any confidentiality agreement intel imposes on vendors of those parts. The Pi4 CM is a much more modest device by comparison. It has no ram expansion and only a few lanes of PCIe, USB3, and some other fairly standard IO interfaces otherwise. Realistically, the frame.work mainboard is the compute module. You plug it into the equivalent of a CM carrier board with the TB4 ports.
cmeacham98 4y ago
It's not just about the reason, but other details too. Does "we'd love to release them" mean "we just mean more time", "there's a 50/50 chance we'll be able to release them", or "we'd love to but it's a long shot". If they are going to come out, will it be in weeks, months, or years?
- needle0 4y ago
  Them not mentioning it, despite mentioning it making their optics better, pretty much seem to point to the NDA not even letting them discuss the stuff you stated.
Dylan16807 4y ago
> due to "reasons*, none of which are likely to satisfy everyone, so we'll try to avoid that discussion Being so vague and listing no reasons doesn't seem helpful to me.
tyrfing 4y ago
The strongest and most likely interpretation is that they simply don't own the IP, and it's based on a licensed reference design. It makes zero sense for a startup like this to have done all of it from scratch - just copy everything possible and innovate the actually interesting parts. If they don't own the design, they can't say that due to NDAs, and the best they can do is a maximally broad interpretation of "repair shop".
- moring 4y ago
  IMHO, the best they can do is being honest about what they can't say due to an NDA. For example, if they can't say that they don't own the design, they might say "due to an NDA we cannot say who owns the design". This goes a long way to earn trust.
  - jimnotgym 4y ago
    It depends if the NDA allows them to discuss it at all!
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      These has to be a limit to this madness, can I get an NDA that does not let you state your name to anyone
      - vel0city 4y ago
        There are limits to contracts in the law. There would have to be some form of consideration to that contract. If you gave me a million dollars a year but I just can't use my current legal name in casual conversation, I'd take that contract. If you just wrote a contract that said "you can't use your name, you get nothing" its an unenforceable contract under US (and most of the developed world's) contract laws under the principle of consideration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration
  - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

donthellbanme 4y ago

The veting of repair shops is a ploy. The watch industry used to vet repair Watch Repair shops on the guise of "Quality Assurance". They would require Watchmakers buy their expensive cleaning machines, and a bunch of other pricy tooling, and requirements; in order to procure parts. 90% of watchmakers couldn't get a parts accout, and the watch companies loved it. it meant more after sales/warranty business. This was because they didn't want to sell parts to anyone. They wanted to do the repairs For a few years, certain Watchmakers kept up with the demands from Rolex, and The Swatch Group. We were just happy to be able to get parts. About 15 years ago the watch companies just decided not to sell parts to anyone. That whole Vertical Intregtation consumer ripoff. I am very leary of any company that wants to vet their repair shops for anything, other than maybe medical equipment. They will supply the schematics, but they don't want to make it easy. (I'm pretty sure I'm hellbanned again?)

onli 4y ago
It is not them though, they clearly just follow rules here that they have to obey. But I think it is a great idea to compare it with the watch market - independent repair shops there have neven seen like a bad idea, and the schematics are pretty much always open - in that the movement is just there, accessible - and the watches are copyable. Which happens a lot though - might not be the most convincing argument if that were the fear.

autoexec 4y ago

> 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. I guess I'd question 'fear of competitors' being a "good" reason, but I'd agree with you otherwise. Regardless of what the need for secrecy is, unless it's "we're forbidden by the state" and there's some kind of national security letter involved or "We're doing something illegal and we'd get sued if it were known to the public", why not just tell the public why they can't release the full schematics? What else would prevent someone from talking about why they couldn't talk about something? Refusing to even explain themselves just makes it all seem more suspicious.

vel0city 4y ago
Sometimes NDAs prevent even revealing the scope of the NDA, because knowing the scopes of things is then potentially exposing information a party doesn't want known by others. Sure, maybe Framework could just go and state those things, but they're potentially burning their relationships with key partners that might be necessary to make the product at the moment. I'm not arguing this is a good thing, just trying to share some perspective.