I’ve been following this thread from the start and I have to admit, when I see the way Framework is supporting their potential creators (in this case Josh) is quite disappointing…
They used to care about the community but the more time pass, the more I see the company to be distant… 
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I didn’t know that Framework was not supporting the creators anymore, where did they come from? is it because Josh Cook said that he didn’t receive a reply to one of his emails? I’m confused.
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Note: the below is speculation and not based on facts. And by looking at the responses below, it is wrong.
I think this raises an interesting point.
FW develop stuff in advance, before telling anybody about them.
For example, the expansion bay with dual NVME slots that they have just announced, was probably being developed for a long time.
What if an independent developer decided to develop their own dual NVME slots bay and thought they would sell them to users and maybe make some money from it.
The before the independent developer finished their bay, FW come out of the blue and announce their own, thus making the independent developers efforts mostly wasted.
Wouldn’t it have been better if FW had told the independent developers earlier, before they wasted their effort?
Might this exact scenario maybe actually have already happened with the dual nvme expansion bay?
Might it happen again for the oculink expansion bay?
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I’ve been aware of the dual m.2 module for a long while, and Framework have already said they won’t be doing a OcuLink module
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March 23rd, 2023: Framework first announced the Framework Laptop 16 and posted preliminary schematics on their GitHub of the dual NVMe expansion.
June 28th, 2023: Framework explicitly stated that the Framework Laptop 16 would have “the ability to add two more in the Expansion Bay for colossal storage capacity.”
July 18th, 2023: The Verge reported that the dual NVMe module would be coming “later this year”.
We’ve known for a long time that this has been coming. This wasn’t out of the blue at all, instead it just seems a bit late (of course the FWL16 as a whole was supposed to be late 2023 and got delayed till early 2024, the dual NVMe module just seems to have been delayed more).
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This project to develop an OcuLink expansion module has been discussed here for a long time and I would not be surprised if it was over a year already.
We are very grateful that Josh has been working toward that.
However that project with an availability target date initially set to a few weeks in the future has been going on for months now and each time Josh provides a status, it is to tell us that he is waiting for some response from Framework.
I don’t want to blame Josh for the delay and I don’t want to blame Framework either but at some point you have to wonder what is happening and if the will to let this project reach completion is really there.
There is always two sides to a story as a lot of things occur behind the scenes. This is something that can only be solved privately between Josh and Framework. I encourage everyone here to take a step back and keep an open mind before rushing to conclusions.
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I’ll have to disagree with you here.
Having the option to get an Oculink port was the reason for me and I’m certain some others to get a FW16 over other laptops.
This project not going forward has been a main point of discussion for months.
This is one of, if not the longest and most active thread in Creators & Developers on the offical framework forum.
Coming out here and saying “Oh we weren’t aware that Josh is waiting for some information” is an insult to the creator community Framework wants to have around their products.
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Des might not be aware of it, but lets try not to argue.
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I’m not angry with Destroya, but with the company. Destroya just has the unfortunate luck of sticking his head out.
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I just wanna say that FW could do better to support creators by making the discussions that happen over email public. Whether it’s some kind of sprcifications that are not released - release them. Or if it’s a proprietary retention nut for the interposer - make it byable on the marketplace. Those private things which ypu can only know about even being available on the forum are surely to detract some creators from even starting their projects.
I am glad that this is now happening. I, like others here for sure, have been a laptop enthusiast for long, and this is the single thread that I have been following the most ever, from the start. The boards Josh are working on are the single piece of tech I am waiting for the most.
I must say that it is people like Josh that make tech awesome. And please, Framework, fixing consumer electronics will be so much easier with the community.
My main question is simply: have we not waited long enough? So my point is to Framework as a company alone: please, please allocate resources to monitoring creators like Josh and responding faster than with a 45 day delay. Thanks.
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This is the reality of novel hardware development and the reason we (usually) don’t announce hardware until it’s ready to ship. In this case, we’ve done a couple of rounds of schematic design reviews with Josh and suggested necessary changes to the design. In the last round of emails, Josh asked a question around PCIe that required us to go upstream and check with suppliers who in turn didn’t respond to us. We then did some further research and provided a response based on our best guess of some possibly underdocumented functionality on the CPU. Each iteration takes time, since for both Josh and for our engineering team, this is one of a large number of other projects that are in flight.
We release documentation and keep interfaces open because we believe in openness, but threads like this explain why many companies don’t.
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Just got the M.2 bay and installed it, it’s working 100%. I tried to drop in an M.2 to Oculink adapter and run an Oculink cable outside the case, but it’s just to tight a space to fit the cable and housing in, even tried taking off the plastic at the end of the cable. I have another M.2 to Female Oculink cable coming in the mail that I think might fit. I’m still eagerly awaiting the Josh version of the Oculink PCB!
@Josh_Cook if I get the M.2 adapter working, is there any data I can get for you that might be helpful?
I have a wild idea.
The m2 board have 2 m2 connector. i assume each one is pcie4x4.
Now take two m2 to oculink 4i board. and wire the cable out of the laptop.
get a oculink merger board and turn 2 4i to 1 8i.
Now everything is solved.
The problem here is quite simple : the lack of communication. If you’d take the time to say publicly something like ‘Hey Josh, we’re waiting our supplier to give the answer you’re looking for, so… bear with us’ the whole community would be like “Wow ! Framework is amazing !”.
But from the community stand point, only thread/project like this are ‘speaking’. And what do we see ? “Still no message from Framework” and a year and a half of 500+ messages long thread.
What I don’t understand is why so much muteness ? So far, your willingness does not deserve such reaction from the community but the fact is, since there is no big project out (especially around gaming possibilities) of the creators yet, you have to keep us informed to be trusted !
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Nope.
I agree, and I think you have a lot of understanding throughout the community that you’re doing a novel and hard thing with not many people.
And many of your customers are invested in the idea of repairability and open hardware, which is also perceived as having a certain level of camaraderie and frankness to the community.
IMO, this doesn’t mean you have to disclose plans ahead of when they’re ready or be really fast at anything. It just maybe means having the authoritative answer quicker, even if it’s something like “We’re investigating this, it’ll take a long time”, repeated every N months if necessary in the case of FL16 thermal issues. Well, if Josh really didn’t receive any reply to his two prior emails, the same reply would work there as well, IMO.
Instead, it’s radio silence, and then when people become unsettled it’s passive aggressive replies like
Which I can also understand from what seems like a sole employee monitoring the forum.
To me, it seems like either the company underestimated the need for people doing different flavors of outside communication (technical, promotional, support), which would need fixing. Or there’s a critical shortage of resources and the communication is not first priority, which I understand you wouldn’t want to disclose in any way.
Edit: Maybe, a simpler thing: the novel hardware thing you’re doing would also benefit from a novel communication and support strategy.
I do understand that everything is money, though, so it’s very easy for me to say “do more”, while coming up with guidelines, directing many people to a different mindset and then also finding enough resources for those extra actions is a hard and slow task. As such, I am not pushing here for anything. I am a happy customer, I just feel with this I can help the company become even better.
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Well, put.
Some people understand that even projects that might seem fairly simple in concept can still take a lot of time. Especially when you have other things going on, and you are working with others who have their own things going on.
But a lot of people aren’t so familiar with the issues of projects like these and the time it can take. The basic concept seems simple enough, that it just feels to them like it should have been finished and shipped months ago.
It’s not Framework’s fault, or Josh’s, or anyone else’s. Just misunderstanding of what’s involved. If some more comments from Framework staff would be possible, just that issues are still being worked on, that would probably reduce the misunderstanding of some. Of course, with limited resources, that may just not be possible. And we in the community might need to remind others that things are likely still moving in the background.
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