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SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation
- barishnamazov 9mo agoIt's amusing to me that the path for this announcement is "/official-response". That's a top level path with a generic name! :-)
- ramblurr 9mo agoObviously given the lack of information (maybe for the best?) there's nothing really to comment on when it comes to the allegations However, I do wonder what this will mean for Adafruit product availability in Europe, as most stores I know of that sell Adafruit products here are Sparkfun distributors.
- reactordev 9mo agoOne of four possible outcomes: - This blows up in Sparkfun’s face and they lose sales for not having Adafruit so they invite them back. Or Adafruit apologies and comes back. - Adafruit is forced to become their own distributor and be a Sparkfun. - Adafruit finds another distributor willing to go to battle with Sparkfun. - Adafruit is no longer available in Europe.
- rpcope1 9mo agoMaybe I'm missing something, but the big players that I know ship and sell globally like Digikey, Newark and Arrow are all Adafruit distributors, and presumably that wouldn't change. Do you mean brick and mortar or something else?
- echelon 9mo agoWhy publish this publicly? Now I wonder what really happened. The SparkFun folks are cool. Back when I was a broke college student, they sent me free electronics kits. I massively respect them for that. I'm surprised AdaFruit did something wrong here. They frequently blog about their stances on issues and seem to try to take the moral high ground on a lot of issues.
- seidleroni 9mo agoI suspect they made this public because many customers will notice that they are no longer carrying Adafruit products. I respect both companies greatly and have purchased from them in the past. It will be interesting to see what happened, if that is made public.
- geerlingguy 9mo agoYeah, what a weird turn of events. I have a tub of random little boards and kits from Adafruit... and the same from Sparkfun. Next we'll see Waveshare and Seeed Studios have a go? Strange happenings.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- cogman10 9mo ago> Why publish this publicly? I'm guessing to get ahead of any sort of speculation on why Sparkfun stops carrying their products? Perhaps also to get ahead of Adafruit publishing a similar public statement with more/conflicting details?
- beeforpork 9mo agoHmm, but the accusations are so vague that it's going to be even more speculation, don't you think?
- LightHugger 9mo ago
- mosura 9mo agoThe inevitable speculation will occur, in which I have no useful insight. I will say adafruit have clearly been heading in a bit of the wrong direction lately. See the misleading noise about arduino, for example. Have to wonder if the whole tariff situation is hurting them and it is causing these ripples.
- b112 9mo agoI did check on archive.org, and the code of conduct is there on March 2025. So they didn't just add it in the last month or so, and then send this notice.
- robotfelix 9mo agoFrom the Code of Conduct: > Unacceptable behaviors include but are not limited to: offensive comments, insults, jokes or ridicule; gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behavior in spaces where they are nor other unappropriately aggressive behaviors; threats of violence or deliberate intimidation; creating additional online accounts in order to harass another person or circumvent a ban; harassment of any form. I can't help but wonder who decided that, in an electronics forum of all places, *any* form of joke should be unacceptable, but sexual images are only a problem if they are gratuitous or off-topic!
- lo_zamoyski 9mo ago[flagged]
- b112 9mo agoCommas are akin to thing(1|2|3) sometimes. So it's offensive comments, offensive insults, offensive jokes, etc, as I read it, with ; breaking the association.
- robotfelix 9mo agoYou're absolutely correct and it's me who has mis-read that part. The point of the oddly relaxed wording on sexual images and behaviour still stands though!
- sorcix 9mo agoThe URL for this page is very generic and bound to become a 404 page. Thinking about URLs is important to prevent link rot.
- hrimfaxi 9mo agoAlmost like it's by design.
- smeeagain2 9mo ago[flagged]
- Dylan16807 9mo agoIs "by design" supposed to imply a negative scheming aspect, or am I reading too much into your comment? This page won't really be relevant to anything after a couple months, so if the link breaks I don't think there's a big problem.
- dieggsy 9mo agoAgreed. Because of this (and regardless), archive everything: https://web.archive.org/web/20260114140733/https://www.sparkfun.com/official-response https://web.archive.org/web/20260114140733/https://www.spark...
- alnwlsn 9mo agoSparkfun redid their site a couple years ago and nuked the links to all product pages of retired products too. A shame. I found someone's archive of the old site at one point, but I've since misplaced it.
- bob1029 9mo agoThe URL for this page is clearly a knee-jerk reaction. I don't expect it will survive the week.
- progbits 9mo ago> Sending and forwarding offensive, antagonistic, and derogatory emails and material to SparkFun employees, former employees and customers > Inappropriately involving a SparkFun customer with a private matter Well those are fun accusations. Looking forward to adafruit response. Anyone has any context? Keep in mind adafruit and sparkfun are business competitors. Not saying either is lying but statements need to be examined carefully. For what it's worth I've purchased from both many times and was always happy customer so this is sad to see.
- csande17 9mo agoAdafruit's response seems to be here: https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-compatible-what-features-do-you-want.77584/post-364465 https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-... (via https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/01/12/discontinuing-the-teensy-at-adafruit/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/01/12/discontinuing-the-teens... ) > in july, we [Adafruit] told sparkfun they needed to get their house in order. for years, sparkfun's leadership ignored specific behavior from leadership (and employees, now former... they had created and promoted hate sites, photoshopped images, and harassment targeting limor, me, and others at adafruit. this was done on company time, shared, promoted. this was reported to them. it was documented and ignored. that was the big issue i wanted them to get some hr training on, or _something_ > months later in 2025, the same individual resurfaced and re-promoted it with what appears to be nate's blessing at the time. we again told sparkfun to deal with this. instead of addressing the behavior, sparkfun’s response was to “ban” adafruit from purchasing teensy by invoking a vague, secret set of rules that neither we nor paul (the creator of teensy) were allowed to see. > this is not a one-off. nate (the founder of sparkfun) has done this before. anyone who has worked with him long enough knows this is how conflict is handled: deflect, escalate, and try to punish rather than deal with the underlying conduct.
- SpikedCola 9mo agoThat certainly doesn't come off well for SparkFun.
- Traubenfuchs 9mo ago
- palmotea 9mo agoOk, so what's the drama? Because it's obvious that there was some drama there: "inappropriately involving a SparkFun customer with a private matter," "Responding and forwarding offensive, antagonistic, and derogatory emails and material." My guess is someone was trying to hit on someone and got mad when they were rejected.
- reactordev 9mo ago[flagged]
- buellerbueller 9mo agoSparkfun is publicizing the enforcement of their code of conduct, making it a public issue, which is a bizarre position to take. Usually, when there are violations of things like this, you don't discuss it outside a need-to-know basis. They are inviting us to ask for the tea.
- behringer 9mo agoAlso it implies that the other side has already made public accusations that sparkfun wants to set straight. What's that info, if any?
- timmmmmmay 9mo agoif they didn't want people to speculate on the details, they could have released a more professional message instead of what they have here. seriously the level of unprofessionalism at this scale of the market is shocking. you can't imagine e.g. Nvidia putting out a press release like this when they drop a vendor
- mosura 9mo ago> you can't imagine e.g. Nvidia putting out a press release like this when they drop a vendor nVidia used to have a much worse reputation than that. Companies did not work with nVidia because they liked doing so.
- RobotToaster 9mo agoTo publish such a vague statement is an obvious invitation for speculation. It seems like rather questionable behaviour itself from spatkfun. The fact that they mention a "private matter" makes me think this is some petty personal grievance that has somehow escalated to this.
- NetMageSCW 9mo agoWhat would you have them publish instead? Your curiosity does not overcome the right to privacy of those involved.
- pepperball 9mo agoDon’t attention whore on the internet if you want privacy.
- mohaine 9mo agoIt seems like releasing more would have probably broken the exact same rules they are claiming AdaFruit broke.
- notatoad 9mo agoif they didn't want to say more, they should have said less. the way that normal serious businesses handle situations like this is to simply stop carrying the product, instead of publishing vague, unverifiable accusations of wrongdoing. and then if somebody notices and asks questions, you'd give a statement like "unfortunately we could not come to an agreement to continue our relationship with this vendor, but we're happy to be able to continue offering a number of other comprable products".
- PurpleRamen 9mo ago> What would you have them publish instead? Is there any duty to publish anything? They could release nothing, or nothing with any details, if they have some obligation.
- 9mo ago
- adathrowaway 9mo ago[flagged]
- oofbey 9mo agoPlease tell us more
- dec0dedab0de 9mo agoPT has always been a bit emotional and reactive, but he's usually on the right side of things. Though it's been many years since I have followed them closely.
- ptorrone 9mo ago"adathrowaway" seems only made to come here and post things that are not true? seem my post here, and ask anything.
- ptorrone 9mo agohi, phil here — post on adafruit here: https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/01/12/discontinuing-the-teensy-at-adafruit/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/01/12/discontinuing-the-teens... i’ll stop back and answer anything (sparkfun will not?). sparkfun is the exclusive maker and distributor of the closed-source teensy and informed us we will not be able to purchase the teensy. this happened after i sent an email reporting the founder, nate, for multiple harassing actions directed at limor, including behavior by him and a former employee. instead of addressing that, they decided to kill the messenger, me, and also cut us off from teensy. so! instead of posting weirdo "code of conduct" letters, we are doing an open-source alternative. so customers are not stranded, and this is not a supply chain emergency for us. looking forward to seeing which one delights customers more. as much as nate wants to continue trying to damage limor’s business and adafruit by scraping our site, and now potentially not paying royalties owed after more than a decade of consistent payments, that’s nothing new. it’s a business strategy to cut others out, not a mystery or a “private drama.” this is exactly why we do open source. when a closed product or exclusive channel is used as leverage, the correct response is to remove the leverage. sparkfun chose to publish a vague public accusation. once you do that, speculation is inevitable. ask away!
- swed420 9mo agoWouldn't be the first time CoC was used as a lame attempt to harm open source. Thanks for speaking up.
- allreduce 9mo agoI find it weird to jump to this from the scarce information we have. "Someone did a CoC violation" is just a way for an org to say "someone was an asshole to such an extent it was driving other people away or getting us into legal trouble", with the manner of assholery defined in the CoC. 9/10 times it is nothing sinister. Of course right now we just don't know what happened.
- jacquesm 9mo agoThe one thing I know is that for threads such as this one it is best to ignore all of the stuff from accounts made just for the purpose of participating in the thread.
- iterance 9mo agoHmm... reads a bit like an email a forum moderator might send a disobedient user. This seems strange, verging on unprofessional, for corporate communications.
- skybrian 9mo agoI don’t know what’s going on, but I checked what Teensy is up to these days and it seems that last March they decided to outsource manufacturing and direct sales to SparkFun: https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/sparkfun-to-manufacture-teensy.76686/ https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/sparkfun-to-manufac...
- torginus 9mo agoDrama aside, why would someone prefer Adafruit or Sparkfun products over much cheaper whitelabel alternatives from China? A lot of those come with very good support and communities as well.
- rcoder 9mo agoAdaFruit and SparkFun both provide MCUs, sensors, and other peripherals that integrate well. Couple that with copious libraries and example projects and you may be up and running without having to stare at data sheets and wiring diagrams and JTAG output just to (say) get a temperature reading and display it on a tiny OLED screen. All of that plus maintaining inventory nearer their customers, doing effective QC on units they ship, writing good docs, etc. means you’re getting something a lot more like a “big OEM” experience from the hardware vendor, even if you’re ordering a handful of parts. The generic AliExpress vendors, in my experience, do not do most of those things. They all support Arduino and/or PlatformIO, and sometimes a “native” SDK like mbed, but you’re often on your own figuring out how to integrate that bare MCU with other devices you need for a complete solution. Docs are often incomplete or untranslated, and it can be hard to know exactly which chip (or associated components like onboard sensors and BME) is on there. It can change between board revisions, or even identically-named parts from different vendors. There are other players like M5 and RAK who make nice modular platform as well, but their prices tend to be up there with AF and SF.
- relaxing 9mo ago> A lot of those come with very good support and communities as well. Which ones? I’ve dealt with Seeed and the quality of support falls far below. Number one reason would be lead time. Adafruit always ships immediately and the transit time is short on the east coast.
- dec0dedab0de 9mo agoWait, does this mean that all adafruit items for sale on sparkfun.com are going to be on a clearance sale?
- napkinartist 9mo ago[dead]
- londons_explore 9mo agoLooks to me like they'll just dispose of the stock and not sell it.
- burnte 9mo ago"Existing inventory will be sold through while supplies last. Once inventory is exhausted, no additional units will be restocked. We have put the remaining stock on sale." https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/01/12/discontinuing-the-teensy-at-adafruit/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/01/12/discontinuing-the-teens...
- HWR_14 9mo agoNo, it means anything they haven't shipped by the end of the day is being cancelled as an order. So I'm guessing they have very little inventory in stock or adafruit is contractually required to buy it back.
- burnte 9mo ago"Existing inventory will be sold through while supplies last. Once inventory is exhausted, no additional units will be restocked. We have put the remaining stock on sale." https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/01/12/discontinuing-the-teensy-at-adafruit/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/01/12/discontinuing-the-teens...
- crumpled 9mo agoThe question was about Adafruit products on Sparkfun. This answer is about Teensies on Adafruit.
- stego-tech 9mo agoGotta love corporate skub fights. Honestly neither side is coming out looking good here. If you’re not doing business with someone anymore, just drop their products. You don’t owe folks an explanation other than “unfortunately we do not carry that product anymore.”
- aobdev 9mo agoIt’s not just carrying their products. They are the exclusive producer of Teensy boards and are distributing them to many resellers but not to Adafruit.
- stego-tech 9mo agoOkay? That’s entirely their choice though. A supplier can absolutely cut off a reseller for whatever reason they want to, and no explanation is needed from either party. All I’m seeing from both sides is some attempt to “get ahead of” the other’s discourse, which is just resulting in a Streisand effect that makes both look bad to different degrees. The only winning move is to just shut the f*k up and move on.
- Y_Y 9mo agoAre you one of those pro-skub hooligans? https://pbfcomics.com/comics/skub/ https://pbfcomics.com/comics/skub/
- stego-tech 9mo agoNah, just a spectator. Want some popcorn while we watch? It’s kind of nice seeing a rerun of classic drama given- gestures vaguely …stuff.
- gadders 9mo agoI miss the days when we would get Ruby Drama like this every week.
- Perz1val 9mo agoThose guys migrated to Rust and are too busy pleasing the borrow checker now
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- deepriverfish 9mo agoUntil they there's a post about Zig/C/C++ and they come out of the woods asking why it wasn't written in Rust.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- chaosprint 9mo agoI can't comment on this matter because I don't know the details. However, based on my personal experience consuming Adafruit products and their generous open-source approach, I personally trust Adafruit very much.
- esskay 9mo agoMeh wish it was that simple, this paints at least part of their leadership as completely unhinged: https://chaos.social/@North/115605819126197877 https://chaos.social/@North/115605819126197877 We're only probably seeing part of the whole mess though.
- zeofig 9mo agoDamn that's a considerable body of work.
- Dangeranger 9mo agoFor context: This post by ptorrone suggests that leadership at Sparkfun has been engaged in a long running harassment campaign against the founder of AdaFruit (Limor Fried) and is now attempting to weaponize their CoC to cast blame on the victim in order to deflect from their own behavior[0]. for anyone still reading: in july, we told sparkfun they needed to get their house in order. for years, sparkfun's leadership ignored specific behavior from leadership (and employees, now former... they had created and promoted hate sites, photoshopped images, and harassment targeting limor, me, and others at adafruit. this was done on company time, shared, promoted. this was reported to them. it was documented and ignored. that was the big issue i wanted them to get some hr training on, or _something_ months later in 2025, the same individual resurfaced and re-promoted it with what appears to be nate's blessing at the time. we again told sparkfun to deal with this. instead of addressing the behavior, sparkfun’s response was to “ban” adafruit from purchasing teensy by invoking a vague, secret set of rules that neither we nor paul (the creator of teensy) were allowed to see. this is not a one-off. nate (the founder of sparkfun) has done this before. anyone who has worked with him long enough knows this is how conflict is handled: deflect, escalate, and try to punish rather than deal with the underlying conduct. we do not respond to bullying by backing down. we never have. that is why we are here. https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-compatible-what-features-do-you-want.77584/page-2#post-364465 https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-...
- bob001 9mo agoFor more context: There's also social media posts accusing ptorrone of engaging in harassment campaigns against other people.
- xyzzyxy 9mo agoFor additional context to the context, here's Nick's account of the so-called 'long running harassment campaign' [1]: Nick made a joke site about Phil back in 2017, Phil emailed asking him to stop, Nick immediately transferred the domain to him with a heartfelt apology ("man... I just wanna be friends. I wanna support you and Limor and also feel good about the place that I work (and kinda live). [...] These social tools don't always translate, for that I apologize."), and they wrapped up the exchange on good terms. [1] https://chaos.social/@North/115602441875664452 https://chaos.social/@North/115602441875664452
- calvinmorrison 9mo agoThe only thing this public dispute tells me is I should never do business with either organization. What is with childish adults dragging "drama" into the public spotlight? What is a "Code of Conduct". I would have privately let them know we arent going to supply them anymore and wish them the best. That's it. Public drama is DISGUSTING!
- threethirtytwo 9mo agoRight, then why are you publicizing / dramatizing your own disgust?
- calvinmorrison 9mo agotu quo que
- threethirtytwo 9mo agoI'm not condemning public drama. I support public drama. I'm questioning you, specifically.
- calvinmorrison 9mo agook
- threethirtytwo 9mo agoAre you going to answer the question?
- calvinmorrison 9mo agono
- threethirtytwo 9mo ago
- dec0dedab0de 9mo agoI think that there might be a tad of seasonal depression affecting them here. My initial reaction was basically excitement at the drama, but then I remembered that I need to take my vitamins. It's sad to see two good companies go at it, but I do like the reminder that they are run by actual humans with emotions. This is why we support independent businesses instead of corporations that act like they are run by robots, and likely will be run by robots soon.
- alangibson 9mo ago[flagged]
- squigz 9mo agoWhat's wrong with that? She's working... at a computer... while holding her baby in a carrier?
- alangibson 9mo agoFFS, everyone has gotten so self serious. Familiarize yourself with the 'peak male performance' meme and you'll understand my meaning. Let me make it easy for you: She's killing it in what would appear to be a less than ideal circumstance. She's swatting down people messing with her business while raising a child.
- vegadw 9mo agoI'm still trying to put all the pieces together, but https://digipres.club/@discatte/115588660312186707 https://digipres.club/@discatte/115588660312186707 sure paints Adafruit as the bad party here, though I'm open to information which shows otherwise to understand better.
- ddtaylor 9mo agoThat looks like the usual social media victim style posting.
- notaustinpowers 9mo agoThis whole thing just seems like two terrible people being terrible to each other and both vying for sympathy to be the less terrible person in this.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- chinathrow 9mo agoReading this, it looks like everyone needs a break.
- RobotToaster 9mo agoThis adds some more context I guess https://chaos.social/@North/115605819126197877 https://chaos.social/@North/115605819126197877 Honestly the whole thing seems like everyone overreacting on both sides. Accusing someone is "doxing" because they used your first name?
- buildbot 9mo agoI believe they are claiming doxing based on connecting an email to a social media account.
- YouAreWRONGtoo 9mo ago[dead]
- cobalt60 9mo agoNice take on creating a thread about freensy on SparkFun's own forum! https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-compatible-what-features-do-you-want.77584/ https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-...
- oytis 9mo agoWhy there is often so much drama whenever something open source or community is involved? The best we've got from the industry so far was Astronomer affair.
- SiempreViernes 9mo agoIt's just a selection effect, the culture of openness means you are much more likely to see the drama. That said, why does the Musk vs. Zuckerberg cage fight beef not spring to mind? Or Musk beefing just about any random day anyway? Not to mention the whole "OpenAI going full corpo" drama, that was arguably a much bigger deal, something actually important instead of this small social media debacle.
- oytis 9mo agoOk, ok, I exaggerated. But still, communuty is small, and the industry is big, and drama seems to be handled very differently in both
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- cbeach 9mo ago[flagged]
- ddtaylor 9mo agoI actually have a small lot of the Teensy boards for a USB hardware hacking project I was running for a while. For example, I used them to emulate a USB keyboard to automatically press 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in Path of Exile over and over to avoid wrist strain during a time in that game where every player needed to constantly hit those keys in a loop to play at decently high levels. These boards were an endless nightmare to work with. I had to cycle through many different USB controllers and it was really more like voodoo. I tried buying a few boards from different suppliers and every board had the same voodoo so I gave up and moved on. I ended up getting ATtiny85 to work for what I wanted which sucked too, but at least it worked and was a fraction of the price so I could actually send them to all my friends.
- ddtaylor 9mo ago[flagged]
- zb3 9mo ago[flagged]
- mikkupikku 9mo agoI clicked one of the top level links ITT and mostly it was triggered by two grown-ass children having a disagreement about the ethics of using gen AI and deciding to hash out that disagreement by doxing each other instead of simply talking to each other. But yes, there's also pronoun stuff in the background here, because of course there is. My new rule of thumb is to steer clear of anybody with a fediverse bluesky whatever account. The whole thing is an echo chamber for amplifying insanity.
- hamburglar 9mo agoAs an uninformed observer, here is a possible sequence of events that sounds somewhat plausible based on what we know so far: * sparkfun employee engages in some shitty behavior (maybe harassment, maybe photoshops) toward adafruit CEO * adafruit engages sparkfun to ask them to put a stop to it * employee leaves sparkfun * employee continues shitty behavior * adafruit continues to bug sparkfun about behavior * sparkfun now has no control over employee, wants to wash their hands of it * adafruit isn’t happy with this resolution, continues to push it, interprets inaction as tacit approval * sparkfun cites CoC about private matters, inappropriate messages * HN speculates :)
- nikdoof 9mo agoHonestly, if I received an email like this from the MD of a customer, I'd probably want to wash my hands of them as well https://gist.github.com/NPoole/df0ec196ac1db7e6eecfd2496b9b49ae https://gist.github.com/NPoole/df0ec196ac1db7e6eecfd2496b9b4...
- hamburglar 9mo agoAh, that is pretty illuminating. Insert “adafruit employee / husband of CEO overreacts to internet squabbles and gets a little shrieky because he’s sleep deprived” in there somewhere. This reminds me of the olden days of small messageboard drama. It’s a shame to see it affect a business relationship between two good companies. Maybe they’ll make up after it all cools off.
- ptorrone 9mo agosparkfun will continue to use limor’s open source code, libraries, and designs. that is how open source works, and we are fine with that, and that is awesome! what is not speculation is - paul (teensy creator) told us directly that sparkfun’s decision to block us from purchasing teensy was final. that was not a heat of the moment thing, and it was not handled through normal purchasing channels. i do not even purchase. our purchasing team does. the same is true of the royalty payments sparkfun has made to adafruit for over a decade under standing agreements. there is essentially no day to day interaction. i asked if they are going to keep paying those, no reply yet. the termination letter was addressed broadly to “adafruit leadership,” not to any specific operational contact. that alone tells you this was not a routine business dispute. no current sparkfun employee did anything wrong here. one former employee did, and nate’s behavior toward limor has been an issue for years. i am done with that and him, so that part will sort itself out now.
- drakythe 9mo agoObviously we don't know details, and Phil has made an effort at responding. However, both statements are (deliberately?) vague, and Sparkfun's CoC is laughably short. I am all for the rules being "Don't be a dick" but such vagaries can hide arbitrary decisions. All the vagaries amount to "trust me, bro" statements and when two well loved groups (AdaFruit/Sparkfun) square up in a game of trust everyone loses, at least in the short term. Hopefully this gets cleared up one way or another, in a clear way that means we won't be re-litigating this for the next decade.
- fennecfoxy 9mo agoTbh I think both of y'all are a boon to people mucking about with hardware and that petty arguments, MBA parasite stuff, etc is all counterproductive but fight all you like. I stopped buying stuff from SF/AF ages ago as I find it all overpriced for the most part (for my use cases). But then again I've not been doing too many hardware projects recently anyway. Odd situation tho, both have been bastions of this stuff since forever.
- daemonk 9mo agoI am unsure of the impact of this to the regular consumer as this seems like a pretty niche area. But it's kinda shitty that interpersonal relationships of two companies are impacting their customers negatively. The onus is not up to public opinion or customer politics to resolve your schoolyard differences. We just want to buy your products and not get loaded with baggage. We don't owe you loyalty on top of the price we paid you for the product. It's a bad look for the parties involved.
- mikkupikku 9mo agoQuite frankly, whenever I see people going the public CoC accusation route instead of talking things out man-to-man or simply parting ways politely, I see man children who never learned to resolve problems in a mature manner without running off to get Mom.
- JuniperMesos 9mo agoCodes of conduct are an intersectional-feminist political demand, and are often explicitly justified in terms of protecting women and other marginalized demographics such as genderqueer people from what they view as harassment. Talking things out "man-to-man" is the opposite the discourse norm organizations with codes of conduct want to enforce.
- qq66 9mo agoIt's not clear from the top posts here what on Earth is happening. I've been a longtime customer of both Sparkfun and Adafruit for my kids. What do I need to know?
- 0xbadcafebee 9mo agoThe only thing you need to know is Sparkfun doesn't distribute Adafruit products. There are other distributors you can find with a web search, or you can buy from Adafruit's website.
- renewiltord 9mo agoYet another open source drama fest. Can’t be bothered. I’ll buy the best product at cheapest. I can use two stores.
- verytrivial 9mo agoI tried to parse the history and it goes back to 2021 and apparently touches upon pronouns, NFTs, online unmasking and various online battles around the same. Sigh. Can we put this HN thread out of its misery, please?
- kmbfjr 9mo agoC’mon people, act like adults. Your community and your customers care far less than you think. If truly inexcusable behavior has ensued, there are better ways to handle it. An entire profession exists to resolve them.
- ignaloidas 9mo agoIncredible how Adafruit-sided this discussion is, having seen ptorrone serially creating alt accounts fediverse to harrass people who thought that his behavior was bad [1], going as far as to harrass people on their Etsy stores [2]. I do not expect anything he says to be truthful at all, after having seen how much abuse he spews out. [1]: https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/115605021402124429 https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/115605021402124429 [2]: https://chaos.social/@gsuberland/115599931317645220 https://chaos.social/@gsuberland/115599931317645220
- ptorrone 9mo agoi asked if the person was going to "dox" me if i purchased a sticker that was in my cart already. there are multiple people making accounts using my handle, so i'm now on a server where there is some due process before fake reports or others pretending to be me.
- xyzzyxy 9mo ago> i asked if the person was going to "dox" me if i purchased a sticker that was in my cart already. That implies you asked this of some random Etsy seller you happened to be interested in purchasing a sticker from, due to general privacy concerns. However, as I understand it, you instead tracked down the Etsy store of someone who had criticized and blocked you on social media, specifically to send them further unwanted messages related to your previous conversation about "doxxing" another user. Is this correct? > there are multiple people making accounts using my handle, so i'm now on a server where there is some due process before fake reports or others pretending to be me. Nick cited [1] specific since-suspended fediverse accounts linked to you: @ptorrone@fosstodon.org, @ptorrone@toot.community, @ptorrone@cyberplace.social, @ptorrone.bsky.social, @ptorrone@mastodon.nu. Are you denying involvement with those specific alt accounts, or just vaguely suggesting there might be other impersonators out there? [1] https://chaos.social/@North/115602127173454774 https://chaos.social/@North/115602127173454774
- lsaferite 9mo ago> However, as I understand it, you instead tracked down the Etsy store of someone who had criticized and blocked you on social media, specifically to send them further unwanted messages related to your previous conversation about "doxxing" another user. I have zero knowledge of the drama beyond reading the posts here, but if this is true then that clearly falls into the harassment arena.
- rlt 9mo agoI read a bunch of the relevant social media posts and emails and concluded that all parties are acting deeply childishly. Nate shouldn’t have made a website with a domain name with Phil’s name and photoshopped meme, and brought it back up on social media years later. Phil shouldn’t have been so aggressive in emailing Nate’s and his wife’s employers. Sparkfun shouldn’t have overreacted by cutting off ties with Adafruit.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- andromaton 9mo agoExcept Paul.
- notthetup 9mo agoPaul feels like the only adult in this room.
- asddubs 9mo agoNick is the person who made the website, not nate.
- disqard 9mo agoI have always supported Adafruit -- Limor's principles shine through in the products, the website, the tutorials, and in the long-term track record of standing by their products. Even when I can source things from AliExpress, I often get them from Adafruit. Speaking for myself, SparkFun has lost me as a customer.
- thunderfork 9mo agoWait is this actually an extension of the ~Nov ptorrone mastodon cryfest/freakout? I was kind of hoping that whatever manic episode was behind that had come to a close.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- MarcoDotIO 9mo agoSo why haven't the emails been published? Or at the very least, summarizing the contents of the emails that specifically violate the Code of Conduct. I assume NDA reasons, but I could be wrong.
- jujube3 9mo agoAnother CoC fight.
- adolph 9mo agoWow, what a way to celebrate the birthday of a certain tech CEO by crashing-out in a similar way. This is very disappointing.
- ajb 9mo agoThis is sad, and it doesn't reflect especially well on either party. Here's the thing, though: we evolved in a world where being expelled from the tribe was a death sentence. When people fall out, often their instinct is to try to preemptively convince everyone else that the other guy is the evil guy who should be kicked out. To convince everyone else to take a side. We don't live in that world any more. You're not gonna die if you don't convince everyone that the other guy is the evil one. It's perfectly fine to decide that you just can't deal with someone else, and you can do that while accepting that you don't need everyone else to take a side or be convinced of your reasons.
- kuttel2 9mo ago[flagged]
- ptorrone 9mo agodisagree, and we are not autistic.
- kuttel2 9mo ago[flagged]
- LeafItAlone 9mo agoThis is not acceptable behavior on this forum.
- LoganDark 9mo agoyour writing style in particular fits with a lot of autistic people I've seen, FWIW. but I don't support using "autistic" as an insult (it's honestly the opposite, IMO)
- ptorrone 8mo agothe person said we are "autistic new york jews"
- 8mo ago
- userbinator 9mo agoNever cared much for either. Both are just insanely overpriced "maker" crap that ultimately comes from China anyway. You can get cheaper at AliExpress, LCSC etc.
- throwaway81523 9mo agoAdafruit manufactures its own PCB's in New York, though the actual chips, leds, etc. come from wherever, which is often China.
- 15155 9mo agoThey assemble their PCBs in New York, there's no chance they are actually manufacturing the PCBs themselves there however. PCB manufacturing is an ecological disaster.
- noncoml 9mo agoThis is embarrassing and doesn’t belong in HN
- LeafItAlone 9mo agoThis is all just very disappointing. SparkFun filled a very important gap for me during the downfall of RadioShack. Their Free Day was a source of excitement and goodies. Around the same time they realized the legal implications of Free Day and had to cancel it, (but not because of it) I started buying from Adafruit. Since then I’ve spent many thousands on their stuff. Even when I could get it cheaper elsewhere, I was OK spending more there because of their open source work. I even made a pilgrimage to their office when it was by Ground Zero. I’m not sure I can find them now, but Sparkfun’s Nate has definitely posted public comments over the years that are not friendly to Adafruit, always clearly rooted in jealousy. One that comes to mind was him telling Adafruit to stop pretending they are an underdog and stop preening that they didn’t (at that point) have millions in sales. I totally believe Adafruit’s account of what Sparkfun was doing. At the same time, Phil has always rubbed me the wrong way to - too aggressive and a bit rude, even in their own forums, including where they provide customer support on orders. The threads shared of his egregious behavior do not shock me in the least. I guess this is a good of a reason as any to stop supporting both. I’ll save thousands and I won’t have a continuously growing supply of components for projects I’ll never get around to.
- angst_ridden 9mo agoIgnoring all this drama. But I've always found Paul to be a good guy, who was helpful and honest and provided a great product. Teensy is a great platform, and it's too bad these other players will have a negative impact on it.
- 1shooner 9mo agoThis makes me think of Park Tools. Park sells bicycle tools. They design and produce an amazing breadth of products. They also produce an incredibly valuable library of instructional content about how to use these tools. Calvin Jones, their director of education, just announced his retirement after 28 years. Anyway, they just teach you how to do the thing. They somehow haven't gotten into internet squabbles with their suppliers or retailers. I would just call it professional.
- garbagewoman 9mo agoWhy does this make you think of park tools?
- Brian_K_White 9mo agoSince any such CoC violation is very much merely a claim and not a fact, this should probably be flagged.
- andromaton 9mo agoProbably the key to eventual clarity is at PJRC's forum. PJRC makes Teensy. Imho it's a great product, and the owner, Paul Stoffregen, a great engineer and person from my experience using their products. https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-compatible-what-features-do-you-want.77584/ https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-... My summary: 1. SparkFun and Adafruit are in conflict 2. SparkFun manufactures Teensy under license from PJRC 3. SparkFun cuts off Adafruit as a reseller 4. Adafruit can no longer sell Teensy 5. Adafruit posts on PJRC forum announcing an open-source Teensy competitor 6. Paul posts that it's outrageous in terms of etiquette that they're announcing a competitor on his forum. Adafruit's own forum only allows discussion of Adafruit products. He's allowing it despite mixed feelings.
- nerdile 9mo ago? This may be one of those "90% of the audience doesn't care and is increasingly less likely to buy from either vendor the more they fight in public" situations
- DetroitThrow 8mo agoPaul is awesome. Seems to be stuck in the middle of Adafruit and SparkFun duking it out.
- camb416 9mo agoSuch drama. I’m going back to BX-24s and dusting off the 1st edition Igoe book.
- arthurcolle 9mo agoFeels like a breakup. Damn that sucks, can you get a mediator maybe? Think of the children...
- Animats 9mo agoSo the drama. What do I read to find out what this is about? And should I care?
- simgt 9mo agoIt's all here in the comments, go ahead if you're entertained by high drama people trying to convince a crowd that they're on the good side. My main takeaway is that the lady with pink hair who made Adafruit and the guy who designs Teensy seem to be bystanders in this but end up both losing.
- fhub 9mo agoIt feels to me like this should have gone through private arbitration rather than public accusations.
- likiiio 9mo agoI can't care less about what lead to this drama, but threatening people for building a compatible product is a shit move, sparkfun. They have every right to do this. Not buying anything from you anymore until you back off from this stupid claim. Shame on you.
- phendrenad2 9mo agoOh I missed that detail, where did they threaten?
- phendrenad2 9mo agoWow, after following all of the links here, and wrap my head around this thing, it's hard to shake the feeling that this is merely the start of what will surely be a long and epic drama.
- vasco 9mo agoSeeing how Adafruit recently misrepresented the Arduino acquisition to FUD people this is not surprising to me. Around 15 years ago they had great vibes but the recent stuff is just money grabbing.
- dryark 9mo agoI find this political mess to be interesting, but I'm not sure it's an appropriate topic of conversation for the "professional community." It looks to me like people on both sides were bothering the other over and extended period of time and it got worse till it led to this. Having seen similar over my career I don't understand what digging into this accomplishes besides making all sides more upset. I do think it is wrong for the professional relationship ( continuing to sell technology ) to be ended over a personal dispute. From where I stand it looks like Phil is attempting to defend himself by being open about what happened even though the whole situation seems unpleasant. Besides that I think it is likely best if all sides in this just cease communicating or saying anything more and move on from the personal stuff. My two cents.
- KronisLV 9mo ago> Without oversharing, recent violations include I feel like this prevents me from trusting them, since I’ve no idea what was actually said. Do overshare, remove victim’s information, obviously, but put who did what out there. Same for any rebuttals, you better bring receipts instead of some vague accusations.
- elzbardico 8mo agoAs someone from Generation-X, all of this is wildly amusing to me. Yes, I am getting old.
- c64d81744074dfa 8mo agosigh Mom and Dad are fighting... But seriously, this illustrates to me that Codes of Conduct are mostly suspect. This is obviously a private feud (nobody looks to be in the right here and I don't care who started what), so to pull "they violated the CoC" is pure theatre and bullshit. I'm a Sparkfun customer and I find that really disappointing.
- 4ggr0 8mo agoafter reading all of these mastodon threads and gists, something really irks me. this ptorrone guy acts in some pretty questionable ways and constantly uses his wife and kids as a shield. if someone gets harassed out of nowhere and their kids or spouses are being dragged into it, then that's truly a horrible, shitty thing to do. but to be involved in and start flame-wars, doxxing campaigns and more and then constantly having to mention that you have a newborn when people push back sounds pretty manipulative. smacks someone on their neck, "don't hit me back, man, i got kids and a wife!"