Todd Weaver is vastly exaggerating how special, innovative, and skilled Librem is. Their components are largely sourced from overseas, through domestic distributors, which is the norm for electronics manufacturers; overseas distributors are often precluded from international sales by agreements with their suppliers. There are also far more skilled electronics designers in the USA than he seems to think.
Source: I am an embedded developer, who works on a research, design, and development team which includes electronics engineers, and works on products manufactured in the same facility.
> There are also far more skilled electronics designers in the USA than he seems to think.
Second this. The Liberty Phone PCBA isn't even that exotic as far as modern designs go. The NXP SoC (CPU) it uses is a common part with a rather pedestrian ball pitch. A board like this is within the reach of countless trained EEs here, but they're usually happily employed at companies with higher volumes and margins. This often translates to a perception that they don't exist in the US market when low-budget companies go looking.
I thought the phrasing of "western distributor" was shady. I'm like doesn't that just mean the person ordering and distrusting the parts is "in the west" (not even necessarily US) but the parts could be from anywhere? It's not saying much at all.
Todd Weaver is vastly exaggerating how special, innovative, and skilled Librem is. Their components are largely sourced from overseas, through domestic distributors, which is the norm for electronics manufacturers; overseas distributors are often precluded from international sales by agreements with their suppliers. There are also far more skilled electronics designers in the USA than he seems to think.
Source: I am an embedded developer, who works on a research, design, and development team which includes electronics engineers, and works on products manufactured in the same facility.