Are there or will there be schematics for the Librem devices (5, 13, and 15)?
If there are, can someone assist my search fo them?
If there are not, but there are plans and permissions to provide them, Is this something one could lend efforts to create? I have no previous experience creating schematics but have used them often and I am a willing and persistent learner.
This is where theyâre supposed to be: https://wiki.puri.sm/hw (accessible from puri.sm via âSupportâ > âHardware referenceâ)
Unfortunately that wiki looks like someone spent 5 minutes copy-pasting a bit of Wiki.js script, changed the model referenced on each corresponding page, and never came back to it. Every âSpecsâ section says to put
what chipset and featuers [sic] are present
and every âTips and Tricksâ section has a helpful reminder to the Purism developers:
Donât list problems
So, horrible wiki with no information on it aside, the answer youâre looking for is in the third-to-last question in the FAQ:
Q: Can I have your motherboard schematics?
A: We cannot share the schematics nor design currently because it is copyright encumbered from Intel reference designs. In the future, on future versions we plan to be able to release those.
Purism canât release its laptop schematics as long as it uses an Intel reference design. Hopefully one of the next steps after the eventual release of the Librem 5 will be to develop an in-house design for the laptop motherboards that can be shared with users.
Here are the Librem 5 dev board schematics
Here is the hardware source code for the Librem 5 Dev Kit under the GPL 3.0:
You can open the .sch files using KiCAD. It looks like to me that everything is there except for the .gbr (Gerber), .drl (drill holes) and .pos (position files for pick and place machines). The Purism Social Purpose Corporation filing says that the company will release all the software source code and hardware schematics that the company creates, so Purism should also release the source files for the final Librem 5.
See this article about how Purism designed the Librem 5 using 100% free software:
I didnât think that it was possible to only use free software in hardware design, so hats off to Purism for doing it. (When I worked in a hardware design company in the late 1990s, I remember the guys who worked on hardware telling me that the free software tools were never going to be good enough for designing hardware, so times have changed a lot.)
Todd Weaver said in this interview that Purism wonât release its Gerber files until the company has recovered its development costs on the Librem 5, which he estimated would be within 3-5 years.
Unfortunately, Intel wonât let anyone publish their modifications to the Intel reference designs which are copyright encumbered. It would be awesome if someone would sit down and try to recreate the schematics for the Librem 13 and 15 by looking at the motherboards. According to this post, the Librem 15 v3 is a modified Clevo U953. As far as I can tell, everyone who makes Linux x86 laptops (System76, Tuxedo Computers, Slimbook, Purism, Station-X) uses Clevo, but Purism is the only one (that I have heard of) which has modified the Clevo motherboard and case.
The one company that didnât go the x86 route was Pine64 in creating its PineBook, which is probably why Pine64 was able to publish its schematics in PDF (but no free/open source license), whereas none of the others have. I assume that Rockchip doesnât have the same restrictions on publishing modifications to their reference designs as Intel.
I really hope that Purism will make an i.MX 8 laptop after this, so we can finally have a free/open hardware laptop.
Either that or they skip the ARM step and go directly to RISC-V. (Hey you said free /open 
)
On the other hand, it might be a simpler step to reuse a lot of the engineering of the phone, and enhance it to a laptop.
But IMO it would make the most sense to do that to revive Librem 10/11.
Then, iterate to RISC-V for Librem 5, 10, 11.
Realistically, all that would need at least 3 years, allowing RISC-V to become more powerful before making a Librem 13 replacement 
Now that Qualcomm has become a major investor in SiFive, the company is predicting a RISC-V smartphone in 2 years and a server in 5 years, but only the CPU part is likely to be open hardware, whereas the GPU, VPU, DSP, ISP, Wi-Fi and cellular baseband will be proprietary and those other parts will probably require binary blobs, so Purism might not be able to use it. However, Intel is also investing and Intel is much more friendly to open source, so hopefully we will see a RISC-V CPU paired with an Intel GPU and no Wi-Fi or cellular baseband, so Purism can use the chip.
Step by step
Given enough interest, maybe in a few years Purism (maybe in a joint venture) could work on a free GPU.
There also seems to be some base to build on. Quick search turned up gplgpu (github) and MIAOW which seem to complement each other nicely, but I think there are others, too.
But more important than the source might be to get the people who worked on such experiments. 
I can not give details yet, but watch out our âNews and eventsâ section during the next days 
Cheers
nicole
Thatâs an interesting reply iâm getting really curious about it
I think an open gpu would be awesome, and i hope in the next 2-3 years to see more open hardware such cpu (power/risc-v) open gpu (nothing available yet, probably just vivante afaik) an ssd with open firmware. A complete open hardware system, without binary blobs itâs something we all want i think.
I cannot write this post without remember to purism europe is a thing, i know some of you like @nicole.faerber are european, and you know how bad is to buy from usa, so i hope you will fix asap making or finding an european reseller, keep in mind if you sell a product in usa at 1k$ whould be nice to find the same product in eu at 1k⏠that is more than 1k$ but fair enough
The EU thing is a tad more complicated than it might seem at the surface. Also here I can not give details yet but I can assure to you that we are working on this for quite some weeks already. We have not yet made a final decision which path to follow, that why I can not give details, but we are aware of the problems and are working hard on solutions. So, stay tuned
Cheers
nicole
Thank you very much, buy purism product within eu will be a kind of gift for everyone here
OMG! Just knowing that someone will be working on this makes me giddy. 
in 5 years, but only the CPU part is likely to be open hardware, whereas the GPU, VPU, DSP, ISP, Wi-Fi and cellular baseband will be proprietary
The is the Risc-V gpu project, that is looking to move VPU and GPU functionality onto the RISC core, by adding vectors and building the toolchian to place the chip as a Vulkan target, sort of like LLVMpipe. It wonât be fast or impressive, but it should be servicable. https://libre-riscv.org/3d_gpu/
The radio stuff is both easier and harder. Easier in that all the specs are out in the open and SDRâs already can implement some of the protocols, harder in that the regulatory stuff is harder. Youâd have to set certain parameters in a ROM and make sure the module couldnât operate outside of them.
Jumping into a mesh protocol could solve some of the issue, but in a way thatâs even harder, as itâs not that useful without wide adoption.
SiFive recently signed an agreement with Imagination Technologies to use the PowerVR GPU and a neural network accelerator, so we have to assume that that is what they are planning to use when they talk about mobile SoC for smartphones in 2 years time. The PowerVR GPU sucks because there is no free driver. 
SiFive could have gone with Vivante if they had cared about free software. Still, it is good to know that their long-term plan is a free/open hardware GPU.
SiFive =/= Risc-v. SiFive is just one of potentially many OEM implementors some of which may not care at all for libre software. The Cores and ISA are offered under a libre, but not copyleft license.
Yes, but SiFive is the only company that I know of which is trying to create an SoC for mobile devices and servers using RISC-V, so it is the company that Purism wants to influence.