Farhan designed the sBitx and set up an organization to sell & suport that product.

Subsequently, he scratch-built a sBitx, substituting a few costly components and built it Manhattan style (a style of construction even less conducive to mass production than the old heathkit style of soldering numerous parts on terminal strips).

To make it a "product" for HF Signals to sell, (if I understand correctly) it would require doing a new PCB layout and developing formal hardware testing/certification protocols, along with worker training to assemble new boards.?

These are easy to list, but hard to justify without significant market interest.

As I understood, the whole idea of the sBitx was to show that someone without $400 to spend on an sBitx could build their own radio with slightly less features but at a significantly lower cost. Turning it into a product eliminates many of those cost savings (just shipping it from India becomes a significant expense).

The code is on github, as is the schematic - perhaps someone other than Farhan could generate a PCB to help potential builders? That seems to be Farhan's preference...

As for the implication that HF Signals 'can't afford' to develop this product, let's remember what HF Signals is - it's essentially a charity project, designed primarily to provide skilled, high-paying piece work to poor Indian women, which happens to sell low cost/high-feature HF radios to hams around the world. Farhan isn't trying to be the next Yaesu or Icom, he wants to help low-income indian families prosper.

/soapbox

Just my $0.02,