Title of the (concerning) thread on their community forum, not voluntary clickbait. Came across the thread thanks to a toot by @[email protected] (French speaking)
The gist of the issue raised by OP is that framework sponsors and promotes projects lead by known toxic and racists people (DHH among them).
I agree with the point made by the OP :
The “big tent” argument works fine if everyone plays by some basic civil rules of understanding. Stuff like code of conducts, moderation, anti-racism, surely those things we agree on? A big tent won’t work if you let in people that want to exterminate the others.
I’m disappointed in framework’s answer so far
This is unfortunate for sure. I want to give them a few days to respond for real, it’s always possible they just didn’t know about the issues here, but even in that thread they’re brushing it off as though it doesn’t matter. I’m not really sure what they get out of donating to these projects other than potential PR, anyway.
On a personal level I’ve recommended their laptops to people who have later bought them, and I was even looking at buying one myself to replace my aging macbook, but I don’t think I can do that anymore while this is unaddressed.
I’d imagine Dell or Lenovo would ALSO be giving money to people you disagree with, albeit more secretively. Plus, their laptops are less repairable.
There’s no ethical consumption under Capitalism, so you pick the “best” choice; Framework might still be “best”, they haven’t discarded all their competitive advantage.
I’ll probably do System76 for my next laptop, but I was considering Framework for my next phone. I don’t expect to need to purchase either soon tho, so lots of time for the decision calculus to change.
I wonder a bit about how this leaves framework as a company, too. They were always the brand people went to because of their stance on the politics of repairability and environmentalism. If they don’t have the politics on their side anymore, their laptops aren’t a great value proposition compared to other laptops. Sure, you can upgrade a framework, but if it costs twice as much as a similar laptop you’d have to upgrade the internals twice before you’ve saved any money.
I think it’s more about repair ability than it is about upgrading. At some point you’re going to end up with hardware that needs a different motherboard and then you might as well just replace the whole thing. There really isn’t anything that can be done about that.
To be honest I kind of think framework go a bit far on the modularity of the device, it’s a nice to have but really I’d be perfectly fine with a laptop that just has a replaceable keyboard, screen and battery, as those pretty much exclusively tend to be the parts that go wrong. Hell you could strip it down even further and just have an easily replaceable battery and it would probably be fine for 90% of people.
You can just buy a newer, better mainboard on their website and slot it into your existing laptop. No need to change out everything. I fucking love them for that.
Hell no, I love that I can just upgrade to a better Mainboard in a couple years
Why would I also ditch all the other components because of a CPU change?
I mean I assume it’s because you wouldn’t in fact be able to get constant upgrade you’d end up being limited by socket design and things.
There has already been at least one incompatible motherboard upgrade. Essentially a whole new line of framework laptops.
Yup, I’m not s huge fan of the FW12 because of the 3rd format they now have to maintain
But the Mainboard of 12, 13 and 16 are all interchangeable inside their model line
You’re not really limited by socket design, as you change out the whole motherboard
The only limit is the physical size inside the case. And maybe thermals
I mean, there’s no real reason laptops shouldn’t like any desktop computer with parts that can be swapped out. Maybe when laptops were first coming on the market with a difficult form factor to work with, but it’s been long enough that modularity should be easy and the default.
If you can swap out tiny little SIM cards in a phone, you should be able to slot in standardized, smaller form-factor components like RAM, SSDs, etc.
And by the way, people can and do swap out motherboards all the time for desktops. There is no good reason to need to buy all new components all the time.
Yeah but you can’t put a non ATX motherboard in an ATX case it physically doesn’t fit.
Unlike desktops where you can get oversized cases laptops are all designed towards the board the really isn’t that much space in a framework laptop. Like I don’t you could go up a couple of inches and get a bigger screen for example because the whole frame wouldn’t fit it.