It very much already has this from the people that matter most. Louis Rossman is a titan of the Right-to-Repair movement and while he wishes for more access to schematics and chip availability, upon a private conversation with Nirav (the CEO of Framework) he says that he understands the dificulties in releasing those documents and has given it his seal of approval.
Linus of LinusTechTips, with his multi-million subscriber base has not only pumped up this laptop, he personally invested $200k of his own dollars to make a public demonstration of his support. Other tech outlets that matter like iFixit have also fully supported this product. Of all the things that could cause Framework to fail, its not for lack of publicity.
Currently Framework lacks the scale to even dream of doing this, it would be great but not going to happen any time in the next 2-3 years, Framework simply lacks the money to order enough laptops to keep those retailers happy (we will get there one day!)
Also not possible at the moment. B2B sales and such rely on prompt repair services, as in Dell will send a repair tech to your business within a week (maybe less idk) to repair your device on site. Framework lacks the funding or support network to enable this.
There are fundamental differences between those projects and Framework. Area 51 aimed to be a desktop replacement, it carried a desktop CPU and a beefy (but non-upgradable GPU), requiring stupid amounts of engineering to cool and power. This also made it very heavy, ensuring that it was strictly desk-bound. That engineering also made it pricey, further narrowing it’s niche market.
NUC isn’t really abandoned although I will concede it doesn’t receive much love. Again it’s an entirely different concept. That markets to SFF desktop enthusiasts which isn’t a large market and again, cramming powerful parts in small chassis’ drives up the price.
Framework is mainstream, it targets those who would consider the Dell XPS 13 and 15. This market is much larger and also requires less engineering than trying to cram a dGPU into a small chassis. Other products didn’t offer the kind of upgrades that Framework is offering either. So long as mainboards can be designed to fit within the same thermal and physical envelopes that current boards have, indefinite upgrades are possible.
I agree Framework needs to penetrate the B2B market, that’s where the money is, selling to consumers just won’t cut it if growth is what is desired and Framework is making headway there.