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Adafruit’s goal is the success of Adafruit. They built an increasingly closed ecosystem on the shoulders of a constellation of open source projects. Success is

by ogou 6y ago

Adafruit’s goal is the success of Adafruit. They built an increasingly closed ecosystem on the shoulders of a constellation of open source projects. Success is no sin, but I’m tired of their branded bloatware being touted as groundbreaking. Their development choices are commercially expedient and designed to capture market share instead of contributing to the greater success of the open source maker movement that enables their existence.

ntoll 6y ago
I'm an open source contributor. I've worked/collaborated with Adafruit. They support the ecosystem. Perhaps they don't blow their own trumpet in this respect (and should, so you could see how the do give back). My experience is a counter example of your comment, "...instead of contributing to the greater success of the open source maker movement that enables their existence".
amelius 6y ago
You can say the same thing about Apple, which, by the way, is also a kind of fruit. It looks like the fruity companies are reaping all the fruits from open source software.
sokoloff 6y ago
This is a much more negative take than I have on Adafruit. Adafruit is, to me, a great provider of breakout boards and gives generously to the community while trying to stay in business. They might be slightly more profitable if they closed off everything they could. I’ve used their libraries on a lot of projects without using their hardware. Their stuff works, is open, and when I used one of their LSM6DS dev boards on a 32-bit micro, it had an underflow bug; because that board and library was open-source, I could fix it the same afternoon I got the package. The fix was simple and obvious, they accepted my pull request, and now no one else has to waste that hour. That’s the power of open source to me. I hold Adafruit and Limor in a positive light and think their “bloatware” is very effective in making electronics accessible to many more people than before, much the same as the $30 Arduino did for the $2 AVR. The ecosystem and accessibility matter. I agree that they’re seeking success of Adafruit, and agree that’s not a bad thing, but I don’t see how they’re going closed. What is “closed” about their ecosystem? The article we’re discussing is about MIT-licensed software on their GitHub.

by ogou 6y ago

ntoll 6y ago

I'm an open source contributor. I've worked/collaborated with Adafruit. They support the ecosystem. Perhaps they don't blow their own trumpet in this respect (and should, so you could see how the do give back). My experience is a counter example of your comment, "...instead of contributing to the greater success of the open source maker movement that enables their existence".

amelius 6y ago

You can say the same thing about Apple, which, by the way, is also a kind of fruit. It looks like the fruity companies are reaping all the fruits from open source software.

sokoloff 6y ago

This is a much more negative take than I have on Adafruit. Adafruit is, to me, a great provider of breakout boards and gives generously to the community while trying to stay in business. They might be slightly more profitable if they closed off everything they could. I’ve used their libraries on a lot of projects without using their hardware. Their stuff works, is open, and when I used one of their LSM6DS dev boards on a 32-bit micro, it had an underflow bug; because that board and library was open-source, I could fix it the same afternoon I got the package. The fix was simple and obvious, they accepted my pull request, and now no one else has to waste that hour. That’s the power of open source to me. I hold Adafruit and Limor in a positive light and think their “bloatware” is very effective in making electronics accessible to many more people than before, much the same as the $30 Arduino did for the $2 AVR. The ecosystem and accessibility matter. I agree that they’re seeking success of Adafruit, and agree that’s not a bad thing, but I don’t see how they’re going closed. What is “closed” about their ecosystem? The article we’re discussing is about MIT-licensed software on their GitHub.