I wish their mainboard became an actual motherboard spec (something like LAPTOP-ATX), it seems like it's proprietary. Would open the door for more folks to build swappable laptop boards.
just dumping the specs on the website isn't enough. they need to to actually talk to other vendors and get them involved with the project, and figure out the right financial incentives for them, which won't be easy.
They even promote 3rd party enclosures for the mainboard in this post so you can’t even say they’re not fostering the ecosystem when they can. It’s not incumbent upon Framework to actually provide competition. That’s a competitor's job.
The nuance is that being open is the ”right thing to do”. It’s not fair to criticize Framework for doing the right thing because no competitors have stepped up yet. Or because nobody else has come around yet. It’s fine to comment on the situation and say “effectively I can still only buy a Framework mainboard”. Thats true, of course. But that's in no way Framework’s fault.
I said this holds if all else is equal. You're now bringing in cost. This is a factor too, for sure, and responds to my all else is equal caveat. And if your cost analysis determines that Framework is not worth the price, then there isn't much I can do about that in a discussion here since I can't speak to their quality/reliability/experience (and why they might be worth the cost or how you might otherwise benefit for the additional price when compared to e.g. Dell) since I'm not an owner.
The internet is in for a wild ride with the above agents. I don't think internet discourse will survive.
As to the VCs funding the endeavor, maybe you've heard of the open source movement? While funding is still sometimes slim, there are still businesses being funded "for the greater good", rather than primarily trying to enrich the executives. I'm also of the mind that funders of Framework knew what they were getting into. Their openness wasn't exactly a secret, nor would it have been from the board or any investors.
If Framework was able to move the needle on modularity and reusability (and thus poison less of the Earth *) of what was previously mostly ewaste, then even if they went bankrupt, it still would be progress for humanity and the founders can hold onto that for the rest of their lives.
* The 2nd R of environmentalism is reuse.
Framework is open-spec because it's good for business and customers. I would hope their investors knew exactly what they were getting into--and that's not a charity. It's a good business built on principles of reducing e-waste and reusing perfectly good parts year over year instead of vendor lock-in and planned obsolescence. It's a better product and better UX. And like Amazon showed the world, that matters. Open source has nothing to do with nor does it imply charity. Please stop misleading people by equivocating.