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As 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

As 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 ago
Honestly, 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 ago
  Ah, 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 ago
    sparkfun 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.
    - hamburglar 9mo ago
      > 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 That really doesn’t tell me anything. I would like to humbly suggest you’re very close to this issue, in an already stressful personal situation, and you’re reading things between the lines kind of aggressively and overreacting. I’m not saying you’re wrong, and I’m not saying whatever others did is ok, but I am saying that you aren’t improving anything by being here trying to litigate your case. I don’t think anyone who puts any thought into this can legitimately accuse you of anything except getting a little too worked up about it. Respectfully, go take care of your family.
      - ptorrone 9mo ago
        it seems like if i do not reply, it's worse? i totally get what you are saying, however i think we're part of this hackernews community too, and not here to litigate past issues, and i will probably always get a little too worked up when it comes to what i believe is a long history of a "competitor" doing things outside of "it's just business, get thicker skin" ...
        hamburglar 9mo ago
        > it seems like if i do not reply, it's worse? Yes, it really does seem that way to you. But only to you. :)
        jacquesm 9mo ago
        That's not necessarily correct. If you leave something standing without gainsaying it there is a substantial fraction of the viewers of the interaction who will come away with the impression that that party that did not speak up against the last comment lost the discussion because they ran out of arguments. This is so widespread that there are multiple names for the phenomenon and lots of good interaction has been ruined by it.
        9mo ago
- account42 9mo ago
  Are these all teenagers?
- ahepp 9mo ago
  Setting aside any concept of who's "right" or "wrong", if I got an email like this from the MD of a customer, I'd share it with my team, we'd all laugh a bit, take a deep breath, and find a way to de-escalate the situation. Similarly if I were buying product from a supplier and they made an immature joke I found hurtful, I would probably just ignore it. If it was a recurring problem maybe I'd say "I really didn't appreciate when you <xyz>'d, can we keep this focused on business in the future?" And if that didn't solve things, I'd see if someone else could be assigned to handle the account. I hope those examples don't minimize what either side is feeling, but I have to say that I don't feel I've seen anything in this thread that gets my blood pumping. Dealing with difficult or rude people is part of the job and part of life. Taking things personally, especially in business, is a _very_ expensive luxury. And if that isn't convincing enough, if you still feel angry about it in a month you can usually yell at them later. But if you escalate today and feel foolish about it later, it's a lot more difficult to mend the wounds.
  - Brian_K_White 9mo ago
    Everyone necessarily, axiomatically, thinks that the way they react to things is reasonable. But not all other modes of existence are automatically unreasonable even if they are different from one's own definition of reasonable. Even if I would opt to ignore something like that in some paticular case for whatever my reasons are, I would rarely presume to suggest that someone else should ignore something like that for whatever my reasons are.
- skilning 9mo ago
  Can't help but read that and think, "And Nick thinks this email chain makes HIM look like the reasonable person?"
  - squigz 9mo ago
    What am I missing about Nick's behavior that is unreasonable?
    - LeafItAlone 9mo ago
      None of it is reasonable. This is an online version of a schoolyard tiff. Neither side in that email chain is reasonable or mature.
asddubs 9mo ago
Here's the ex-employees side of the story, complete with receipts (taken from another post on this story): https://chaos.social/@North/115602127173454774 https://chaos.social/@North/115602127173454774 IMO what they did is pretty overblown. They did register a joke domain but basically folded and apologized immediately. Then nothing for 8 years, until they commented on a post where adafruit was accused of doxxing on mastodon.
- cloudfudge 9mo ago
  Wow, that really puts things in perspective. Phil, based on this summary and reading the emails about what went down between you and Nick, you sound like an absolute lunatic. He mocked you once back in 2017. He set up a satirical website that had a single joke: you as obsessed detective, sniffing out perceived slights. Then, when called out on it, he very eloquently apologized for it, expanded on why he had done it, and offered an olive branch of friendship. In response, you have absolutely flipped out on him. You've continuously attempted to expand his "crimes" into something against your wife, attempted to accuse him of misogyny, attempted to frame it as an attack on your kids, attempted to loop his employers into it, claimed you'd sue, and called him a bully. And later, when he made an offhand reference to this ordeal (to someone else you appear to be flipping out on), you accuse him of starting a new campaign of bullying. It's so completely out of scale that I have to question your mental state. And the cherry on top is that in the middle of all this, you took a piece of information -- the fact that he has posted on social media about mental health issues -- and tried to leverage that into a claim that this is all his problem. I'm sorry, but that is absolutely disgusting behavior, and I hope you're ashamed of it.
  - pnw_throwaway 9mo ago
    Between that and his behavior in this HN thread, looks like I'm done buying from Adafruit. Shame, they were decent.

nikdoof 9mo ago

Honestly, 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 ago
Ah, 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 ago
  sparkfun 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.
  - hamburglar 9mo ago
    > 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 That really doesn’t tell me anything. I would like to humbly suggest you’re very close to this issue, in an already stressful personal situation, and you’re reading things between the lines kind of aggressively and overreacting. I’m not saying you’re wrong, and I’m not saying whatever others did is ok, but I am saying that you aren’t improving anything by being here trying to litigate your case. I don’t think anyone who puts any thought into this can legitimately accuse you of anything except getting a little too worked up about it. Respectfully, go take care of your family.
    - ptorrone 9mo ago
      it seems like if i do not reply, it's worse? i totally get what you are saying, however i think we're part of this hackernews community too, and not here to litigate past issues, and i will probably always get a little too worked up when it comes to what i believe is a long history of a "competitor" doing things outside of "it's just business, get thicker skin" ...
      - hamburglar 9mo ago
        > it seems like if i do not reply, it's worse? Yes, it really does seem that way to you. But only to you. :)
        jacquesm 9mo ago
        That's not necessarily correct. If you leave something standing without gainsaying it there is a substantial fraction of the viewers of the interaction who will come away with the impression that that party that did not speak up against the last comment lost the discussion because they ran out of arguments. This is so widespread that there are multiple names for the phenomenon and lots of good interaction has been ruined by it.
        9mo ago
account42 9mo ago
Are these all teenagers?
ahepp 9mo ago
Setting aside any concept of who's "right" or "wrong", if I got an email like this from the MD of a customer, I'd share it with my team, we'd all laugh a bit, take a deep breath, and find a way to de-escalate the situation. Similarly if I were buying product from a supplier and they made an immature joke I found hurtful, I would probably just ignore it. If it was a recurring problem maybe I'd say "I really didn't appreciate when you <xyz>'d, can we keep this focused on business in the future?" And if that didn't solve things, I'd see if someone else could be assigned to handle the account. I hope those examples don't minimize what either side is feeling, but I have to say that I don't feel I've seen anything in this thread that gets my blood pumping. Dealing with difficult or rude people is part of the job and part of life. Taking things personally, especially in business, is a _very_ expensive luxury. And if that isn't convincing enough, if you still feel angry about it in a month you can usually yell at them later. But if you escalate today and feel foolish about it later, it's a lot more difficult to mend the wounds.
- Brian_K_White 9mo ago
  Everyone necessarily, axiomatically, thinks that the way they react to things is reasonable. But not all other modes of existence are automatically unreasonable even if they are different from one's own definition of reasonable. Even if I would opt to ignore something like that in some paticular case for whatever my reasons are, I would rarely presume to suggest that someone else should ignore something like that for whatever my reasons are.
skilning 9mo ago
Can't help but read that and think, "And Nick thinks this email chain makes HIM look like the reasonable person?"
- squigz 9mo ago
  What am I missing about Nick's behavior that is unreasonable?
  - LeafItAlone 9mo ago
    None of it is reasonable. This is an online version of a schoolyard tiff. Neither side in that email chain is reasonable or mature.

asddubs 9mo ago

Here's the ex-employees side of the story, complete with receipts (taken from another post on this story): https://chaos.social/@North/115602127173454774 https://chaos.social/@North/115602127173454774 IMO what they did is pretty overblown. They did register a joke domain but basically folded and apologized immediately. Then nothing for 8 years, until they commented on a post where adafruit was accused of doxxing on mastodon.

cloudfudge 9mo ago
Wow, that really puts things in perspective. Phil, based on this summary and reading the emails about what went down between you and Nick, you sound like an absolute lunatic. He mocked you once back in 2017. He set up a satirical website that had a single joke: you as obsessed detective, sniffing out perceived slights. Then, when called out on it, he very eloquently apologized for it, expanded on why he had done it, and offered an olive branch of friendship. In response, you have absolutely flipped out on him. You've continuously attempted to expand his "crimes" into something against your wife, attempted to accuse him of misogyny, attempted to frame it as an attack on your kids, attempted to loop his employers into it, claimed you'd sue, and called him a bully. And later, when he made an offhand reference to this ordeal (to someone else you appear to be flipping out on), you accuse him of starting a new campaign of bullying. It's so completely out of scale that I have to question your mental state. And the cherry on top is that in the middle of all this, you took a piece of information -- the fact that he has posted on social media about mental health issues -- and tried to leverage that into a claim that this is all his problem. I'm sorry, but that is absolutely disgusting behavior, and I hope you're ashamed of it.
- pnw_throwaway 9mo ago
  Between that and his behavior in this HN thread, looks like I'm done buying from Adafruit. Shame, they were decent.