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Comment by cmeacham98 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

They already claim to fully own the design.

>Our main manufacturing partner is Compal, who makes laptops for many other large US notebook makers.

>Apart from off the shelf modules like the SSD, RAM, WiFi, and LCD, the Framework Laptop is entirely custom to us, and we own all of the design and tooling.

If you locate Acer Swift 3 SF313-53 diagram it will be 90% same thing, just shuffled around with different mechanical design.

They might be owning the design itself, but I can easily imagine that the NDAs required to get access to specifications and design guidelines for parts like the CPU, GPU and other chipsets include a provision that no material must be released that allows others to clean-room reverse-engineer the protected material.

I don't know about these things a great deal, but it would seem reasonable to me that an NDA might include limiting what you can say about the NDA?

It depends if the NDA allows them to discuss it at all!

These has to be a limit to this madness, can I get an NDA that does not let you state your name to anyone

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

I wish "innovative, actually interesting parts" would include delivering an actually repair-friendly laptop - that is - one with full schematics; only ICs that are normally in-stock on digi-key/mouser; no soldered-down components made of melty plastic, especially not next to places that are likely to be reworked; soldermask that doesn't obscure traces; all important signals brought to accessible probe points; mechanical design/connectors/cabling allowing for easy power-on outside of chassis, etc...

Sure, QR stickers and a bunch of new/incompatible iteration of good old ExpressCard are nice to have, thank you, but that doesn't make all that big of a difference to repairability.

This sounds like a great set of constraints for an industrial controller, or a custom Cyberdeck-type portable.

I’m confident any device following these guidelines would be DOA in the larger market, though. Even _if_ you could source things like LCD assemblies that fit your criteria, the expected density (high) and labor costs (low) people have for modern electronics don’t leave a lot of room for this kind of bespoke design.

I’m extremely impressed with how far Framework got on the path to “full repairability” using off-the-shelf parts without producing something that looks like a late-90s Thinkpad.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the old IBM, Tadpole, Toshiba, et. al. designs, but I don’t think that many people outside this community would be willing to pay 2-3x as much for something 2-3x larger and heavier and several generation behind in terms of performance. (Not to mention wildly incompatible with any non-hobbyist OS.)

OTOH, what you’re describing does sound a lot like why custom, hand-wired audio amplifier builders do. They manage to make a business out of it, mainly by appealing to folks willing to spend effectively unlimited money to get that “special something”.

Not sure what you meant by "full repairability", but for component-level system board repair, framework laptop is not far at all from current-gen lenovo or macbook. That's the whole point of OP's video.

User-replaceable RAM, SSD and keyboard are all steps in the right direction, of course. But it would be quite a stretch to give product full marks on repairability based on that alone.

And no SMD mounted connectors, only hole through connectors. The problem with that is that it will preclude the use of certain kinds of cables because the whole industry has now pretty much moved to SMD where possible to shave off the last couple of percent cost.

External connectors are pretty much the only kind of component that is still routinely being used in (full or partial) through-hole form-factor.

Laptop in question does use partial through-hole connectors for all 4 USB-C ports - notice 6 shiny slots around each such port around 0:25 mark in video. Such connectors are actually harder to rework/replace, but also tougher and less likely to require repair in the first place. So overall, well-done here to framework, even if most everybody else is doing that too.

honestly with how much heat the ground plane can soak up on modern electronics, desoldering a beefy through hole ground connector is such a pain in the ass I might rather they be SMD if I have to do something with them in general.

Yes, but there are plenty of internal connectors as well.

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

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.

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?

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.

> 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.

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?)

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.

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