The new and upgraded Framework Laptop

What are the main reasons for not shipping to other EU / EEA countries?

Laptops are uniquely challenging in that each additional country has its own keyboard language, increasing the number of SKUs we need to manage and hold inventory for. This is beyond the normal challenges of entering new markets. We enumerated this in a blog post here: https://frame.work/blog/scaling-up-infrastructure

We are continuing to build the infrastructure and keyboards to expand into more countries though!

Hmm… I don't see how that prevents you from shipping whatever is available. Many of us don't care about localized keyboards. I want a US layout. I dropped an email to your support almost a year ago with a request to add my country to the list, got "no problem, check back in a week", and the country still isn't there.

There are probably many potential users who wouldn't care, I've lived in Norway my whole life but my keyboards have been exclusively with an English layout for more than ten years now. If the thing holding you back from expanding to, among others, Norway is the lack of a nb-NO keyboard, please reconsider :)

Please don't let weird localized keyboards block this. We don't care about that stuff. People buying framework laptops are able to change their keyboard layout in software and use it without having to look at the symbols present on the keyboard. Yes the physical layouts are also different, but that really doesn't matter. Just make it available and forget about these tiny issues that your target market of power users don't care about.

I want to throw my money at you, but I can't because the laptop is not available for shipping to the country I live in.

Just make the US keyboard version available everywhere and worry about local keyboards later, when people ask for them.

Your audience is probably 90% devs and sysadmins, who most definitely can at least handle en_us.

Take this with a grain of salt, but the last company I worked for had a sizable office in Tokyo, and I was told by someone in the IT department that they were legally required to buy computers with Japanese keyboards for their Japanese employees. Obviously that kind of rule wouldn't likely be applied to an individual bringing in their personal devices, but I can conceive of it being enforced on commercial imports.

Similarly, I've heard anecdotes about employers in Quebec being forced to provide equipment that has full support for the French language, even if the employees only actually speak English.

Shipping a US keyboard in Europe seems like an odd choice since most European keyboard layouts are ISO, not ANSI. I could see a blank keyboard working, or an ISO US keyboard maybe, but that is an uncommon layout that I don't think I've ever actually seen before?

> Yes the physical layouts are also different, but that really doesn't matter.

Real YMMV territory here. I use many devices and when one of them has been a US ANSI layout, that has been a problem. Any ISO layout is fine, could be UK QWERTY, AZERTY or QWERTZ, I'll reconfigure it on software and ignore the labels. But applying a ISO layout to a ANSI keyboard leads to issues like Linux losing the # key or OS X just making random shit up and calling it a keyboard layout it isn't.

Luckily, Framework has done the work of making an ISO layout already for UK/France/Germany

To tag on, based on my experience in Eastern Europe, users that do need dual-language key caps will buy a set of stickers for their keyboard.

Or as you said, they don’t need to see the keys - I type in Russian and Ukrainian and don’t need to see the keys.

Does this even matter? The point is that if one is fine with the US/ANSI keyboard, they should be allowed to buy it. To wit, I'm european and despise the ISO keyboards, and have never been forced to use one, so it's not like they're ubiquitous.

In many, many European countries, especially the smaller ones, a large chunk of devs and sysadmins straight out use the US keyboard layout, basically the old IBM PC one. I have no idea what kind of standard they follow... And people don't seem to care.