this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
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cool - but if their product lines are modular and they try to break out of their niche market. whats to stop someone with a lot more capital from snapping them up (Dell, Lenovo, etc)?
Framework is a private company so they need to agree to be bought. I don't know enough about the leadership to be able to say the likelihood of accepting an offer, but it's not just a thing that automatically happens because Dell has a lot of money.
Money talks.
When the owners of a private company are offered millions more than they'll likely make over the nest ten years, the odds of selling are very high.
Look at all the software devs that gets bought.
There's also few but existing examples of people that resist the selling urge, like the VLC dev
The story is literally about a funding round for Framework. Those investors don't just give away the money. They buy a stake in the company.
Yes, the exception. That simply supports my argument.
And we're talking about stuff we see. Again, I bet you'd never heard of FolderShare or UbiBoot before I mentioned them here, and those are just 2 tools of many that I've lost to acquisitions over the years.
How many other tools/products have companies quietly acquired and killed that we don't know about?
VLC
Exceptions are possible. Money isn't everything for everyone.
Exceptions are possible.
And being exceptions proves the norm.
I've seriously lost countless tools because MS acquired them and shut them down. Thousands of dollars gone.
I'm not holding my breath.
Also, Dell buying someone doesn't mean that the product stops being made. Dell bought Alienware and still makes devices for that market segment under the Alienware brand, including laptops. Lenovo bought the Thinkpad laptop line from IBM and still makes those.
Nothing, but it'd still be a win for the consumer because then we'd have repairable/customizable laptops across the board?
We've also seen other brands aren't interested in it because it's harder to make smaller/thinner laptops when they need to be customizable. Also they make more money from having people throw out their old laptops and buying a new one.
More likely not.
Microsoft is well known for buying software companies to shut them down.
Foldershare was a product in 2005 that enabled you to share windows folders across the internet just like sharing across a LAN. MS bought them.
Same with Ubiboot - it enabled you to move a windows install from one machine to any other hardware - on boot it would reconfigure the drivers. Worked brilliantly.
I've used countless products over the years which no longer exist after they were acquired by MS. Things which don't even exist within MS offerings. Clearly bought to be shut down.
This can't be right because capitalism breeds innovation like they said! Right? .....Right??
It does. Those were both innovative products.
Not sure why you feel the need to derail the conversation with your ideology.
Your conversation is about shelving products so other companies cannot compete.
If Dell or Lenovo or similar would actually make modular laptops, that'd also solve my problem.
The modularity makes it easier for them to grow slowly and incrementally. Slow and manageable growth is the key for a business to not overextend themselves to the point they get snapped up by the competition