Isn’t that no different than the millions of open source projects that have few authors, little interest and are abandoned for the next shiny thing? At least in my mind with the current state of LLMs, if there is an open source project that you want to update for yourself, you should be able to do that pretty easily.
Exactly. Oh I have this small problem, or solution I want to solve. Great I can put something together quickly and move on with life. I am not selling it, and it’s not even needed for ‘open source’ because its often incredibly niche problems that I am trying to solve for, that I wouldn’t be able to do elsewise.
For me, it’s been super helpful to write personalized things quickly that I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. Are these things I plan on maintaining for decades? Hell no. But there is no current solution, this isn’t a commercial product, and I always have the code in case I want to make adjustments in the future.
I mean, Dell is the #3 in laptop sales and sells roughly 30 million laptops per year. So yeah, Framework is roughly 0% of market share. I know this is a very tech enthusiast heavy website, but there are certain realities that people should face. It’s like saying Nothing Phone is going to remotely compete with Apple. It’s not a fair or valid comparison in the first place. I think a more fair comparison for Framework (beyond what they are hoping to achieve) would be with a small system builder like System 76, XMG or the likes.
I have never seen a Framework in the wild, however I applaud their approach, but even when taking repair costs in consideration, Frameworks are more expensive than simply upgrading to a newer laptop and using the old laptop for some other purpose. I can’t imagine with the rampocalypse that they easily survive, but I hope they do, I wish other manufacturers would make repair a higher priority.
That would be great, except it seems that most companies are actively discouraging you from using their website, as it’s easier for them to list through Amazon. Recent experience was the product on the website was higher prices, slower shipping and a restocking fee if you need to return. Amazon? Next day, ‘free shipping’ and easy returns.
Not sure unless the place exists locally and you can go in store and actually buy something (that’s becoming rare as well), that there is a better way except to not buy anything in general.