The Framework Laptop and Right to Repair

29 Mar 2022 • 5 minute read

tractor You might have heard some discussion about "the right to repair" or R2R. Some of this is centered around mobile phones, and some in a place you would not have first thought of: agriculture.

Farmers have long been fighting the good fight against bureaucracy. The recent “Right to Repair” movement is now in action to preserve farmers’ rights when it comes to repairing their own farming equipment and tractor machinery. In fact, farmers across America are suing John Deere for the right to repair their tractors.

It seems that John Deere tractors have refused to make diagnostic software and tools available except to their own dealerships.

Plaintiff alleges that Defendant has “deliberately monopolized” the market for repair and maintenance services for such equipment “by making crucial software and repair tools inaccessible to farmers and independent repair shops.”

But the situation is volatile and changing on literally a daily basis. In fact, on March 21st (yesterday as I type this post):

John Deere announced on March 21 it will enhance the capabilities of existing diagnostic tools and expand their availability. In 2023, the company will roll out an enhanced customer solution that includes a mobile device interface, and the ability to download secure software updates directly to embedded controllers on select John Deere equipment with 4G connections.

Congress has noticed and is starting to get involved. Of course, this is a long way from actual legislation, and the situation is changing on an almost daily basis.

Earlier in 2022, Sen. John Tester (D-MT) introduced a bill targeting farm equipment. A 2020 bill looks to do the same for medical equipment. Now, a bipartisan trio of Senators have introduced a new bill that’s the first broadly-focused Right to Repair bill to reach the Senate floor.

On March 14, Sens. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) introduced Senate Bill 3830, the Fair Repair Act. If passed and signed into law, the bill will require Apple and other electronics manufacturers “make available certain documentation, diagnostic, and repair information to independent repair providers, and for other purposes.”

There is a lot of devil-in-the-details interpretation in these proposed bills. For example, below is the wording of one of them, and I can imagine a lot of discussion as to what counts as "fair and reasonable terms." In various hi-tech standards such as Blu-ray, DRAM interfaces, or mobile, there has been a requirement that any patents are made available on "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms" (RAND) which, as you can imagine, has caused no end of negotiations.

In the case of digital electronic equipment manufactured by or on behalf of, sold, or otherwise supplied by an original equipment manufacturer, the original equipment manufacturer shall make available, for the purposes of diagnosis, maintenance, or repair of such equipment, to independent repair providers and owners of such equipment on fair and reasonable terms, documentation, parts, and tools, inclusive of any updates.

In my youth, when it was easier, I did mechanical work on my own car. Cars didn't have any electronics or diagnostic port, and you mostly just needed a good socket set. So you had the right to repair by default, but one thing you quickly discover is that spare parts are very expensive. This is because it requires a whole separate supply chain to make spare parts available and have them in inventory when you want them. A car has about 30,000 parts (many are just bolts or are duplicates so there are fewer different parts). I read once that if you bought all the components to build a car out of spare parts, it would cost well over ten times as much. Doing something similar for electronics would probably be the same. I can easily imagine that having all the chips in a mobile phone available for replacement would be a similarly expensive service to provide. Indeed, the most expensive part (I'm guessing) would be the application processor and might retail for half the cost of the phone, making its replacement unattractive. But beyond that, labor is so expensive that it makes little sense to start unsoldering and re-soldering chips. It is probably cheaper to replace the whole circuit board. But then someone will have to decide if making just replacement boards counts as making parts available on reasonable terms.

The Framework Laptop

framework laptop

The original motivation to write this post was a colleague whose husband owns a Framework laptop. This laptop was created specifically to be easy to repair without a lot of special tools (well, one special screwdriver, but they supply that when you buy a laptop). I don't want this to come across as a commercial for the Framework laptop, but here is a little description from Framework's website:

We’ve built the Framework Laptop from the ground up to be upgradeable in ways that no other high-performance notebook is. In addition to adding memory and storage, you can choose the ports you want, customize the bezel color and keyboard language, and even upgrade your entire mainboard! We made the Framework Laptop convenient and cost effective to keep working great for as long as you want it to. The only tool you need to swap any part of it is the screwdriver we include in the box, and we publish easy to follow repair guides and videos. Thoughtful design and a precision formed and milled aluminum housing enables repairability and upgradeability without adding bulk. Coming in at just 15.85mm thick and 1.3kg, the Framework Laptop delivers the modularity of a desktop in the form factor of a thin and light 13.5” notebook.

I met Sarah and Ray for lunch, and we opened up the laptop and took lots of photos. From the outside, it looks like a perfectly normal laptop, certainly not one that is especially clunky or anything. Inside, it looks very different from the inside of any other laptop, with modular parts. I think most people probably buy a standard version of the laptop, but if you want you can buy the individual modules separately and built your own custom laptop providing just what features you need.

framework laptop opened