14 ms·

SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

504 points by yaleman 8mo ago

vasco 8mo ago
Seeing 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 8mo ago
I 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 8mo 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 ago
As someone from Generation-X, all of this is wildly amusing to me. Yes, I am getting old.
c64d81744074dfa 8mo ago
sigh 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 ago
after 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!"
ramblurr 8mo ago
Obviously 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.
- rpcope1 8mo ago
  Maybe 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?
- reactordev 8mo ago
  One 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.
echelon 8mo ago
Why 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 8mo ago
  I 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 8mo ago
    Yeah, 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 8mo ago
    [deleted]
- cogman10 8mo 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 8mo ago
    Hmm, but the accusations are so vague that it's going to be even more speculation, don't you think?
    - cogman10 8mo ago
mosura 8mo ago
The 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 8mo ago
  I 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 8mo ago
    From 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 8mo ago
      [flagged]
    - b112 8mo ago
      Commas 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 8mo ago
        You'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!
progbits 8mo 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 8mo ago
  Adafruit'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 8mo ago
    That certainly doesn't come off well for SparkFun.
  - Traubenfuchs 8mo ago
sorcix 8mo ago
The URL for this page is very generic and bound to become a 404 page. Thinking about URLs is important to prevent link rot.
- hrimfaxi 8mo ago
  Almost like it's by design.
  - smeeagain2 8mo ago
    [flagged]
  - Dylan16807 8mo ago
    Is "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 8mo ago
  Agreed. 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 8mo ago
  Sparkfun 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 8mo ago
  The URL for this page is clearly a knee-jerk reaction. I don't expect it will survive the week.
palmotea 8mo ago
Ok, 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 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - buellerbueller 8mo ago
    Sparkfun 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 8mo ago
      Also it implies that the other side has already made public accusations that sparkfun wants to set straight. What's that info, if any?
  - timmmmmmay 8mo ago
    if 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 8mo 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 8mo ago
To 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 8mo ago
  What would you have them publish instead? Your curiosity does not overcome the right to privacy of those involved.
  - csomar 8mo ago
    In my opinion, you either publish everything and every detail or simply publish nothing. Here is the tl;dr: My business partner sucks and is a bad person. I am not going to say what he did but he sucks. I am cutting him off.
  - mohaine 8mo ago
    It seems like releasing more would have probably broken the exact same rules they are claiming AdaFruit broke.
    - notatoad 8mo ago
      if 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 8mo 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.
adathrowaway 8mo ago
[flagged]
- oofbey 8mo ago
  Please tell us more
  - dec0dedab0de 8mo ago
    PT 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 8mo ago
  "adathrowaway" seems only made to come here and post things that are not true? seem my post here, and ask anything.
ptorrone 8mo ago
hi, 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!
- axus 8mo ago
  Links to "hate sites, photoshopped images, and harassment"?
- qwe----3 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - nickdurfe 8mo ago
    It's not difficult for me at all; I can understand it quite well.
  - vultour 8mo ago
    It's funny because he tried to excuse it in another comment by saying he's using speech-to-text. I really don't understand what this lie was supposed to accomplish since he seems to be the only person using a STT system incapable of proper capitalisation.
iterance 8mo ago
Hmm... reads a bit like an email a forum moderator might send a disobedient user. This seems strange, verging on unprofessional, for corporate communications.
skybrian 8mo ago
I 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 8mo ago
  Drama 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 8mo ago
    AdaFruit 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 8mo 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 8mo ago
Wait, does this mean that all adafruit items for sale on sparkfun.com are going to be on a clearance sale?
- londons_explore 8mo ago
  Looks to me like they'll just dispose of the stock and not sell it.
  - burnte 8mo 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...
- napkinartist 8mo ago
  [dead]
- HWR_14 8mo ago
  No, 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 8mo 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 8mo ago
      The question was about Adafruit products on Sparkfun. This answer is about Teensies on Adafruit.
stego-tech 8mo ago
Gotta 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 8mo ago
  It’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 8mo ago
    Okay? 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 8mo ago
  Are you one of those pro-skub hooligans? https://pbfcomics.com/comics/skub/ https://pbfcomics.com/comics/skub/
  - stego-tech 8mo ago
    Nah, 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 8mo ago
I miss the days when we would get Ruby Drama like this every week.
- Perz1val 8mo ago
  Those guys migrated to Rust and are too busy pleasing the borrow checker now
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - deepriverfish 8mo ago
    Until they there's a post about Zig/C/C++ and they come out of the woods asking why it wasn't written in Rust.
chaosprint 8mo ago
I 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 8mo ago
  Meh 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 8mo ago
    Damn that's a considerable body of work.
Dangeranger 8mo ago
For 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 8mo ago
  For more context: There's also social media posts accusing ptorrone of engaging in harassment campaigns against other people.
- xyzzyxy 8mo ago
  For 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 8mo ago
The 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 8mo ago
  Right, then why are you publicizing / dramatizing your own disgust?
  - calvinmorrison 8mo ago
    tu quo que
    - threethirtytwo 8mo ago
      I'm not condemning public drama. I support public drama. I'm questioning you, specifically.
      - calvinmorrison 8mo ago
        ok
        threethirtytwo 8mo ago
        Are you going to answer the question?
        calvinmorrison 8mo ago
        no
        threethirtytwo 8mo ago
dec0dedab0de 8mo ago
I 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 8mo ago
[flagged]
- squigz 8mo ago
  What's wrong with that? She's working... at a computer... while holding her baby in a carrier?
  - alangibson 8mo ago
    FFS, 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 8mo ago
I'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.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- notaustinpowers 8mo ago
  This 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 8mo ago
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  - deleted 8mo ago
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- chinathrow 8mo ago
  Reading this, it looks like everyone needs a break.
- RobotToaster 8mo ago
  This 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?
  - valdiorn 8mo ago
    I have to say; they all sound like whining babies with the emotional integrity of a 13 year old hormonal teenager. And these people run major businesses? And the complaining about doxxing because he posted the person's email address? Grow up, mate.
YouAreWRONGtoo 8mo ago
[dead]
cobalt60 8mo ago
Nice 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 8mo ago
Why 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 8mo ago
  It'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 8mo ago
    Ok, ok, I exaggerated. But still, communuty is small, and the industry is big, and drama seems to be handled very differently in both
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
cbeach 8mo ago
[flagged]
- ptorrone 8mo ago
  why talk about limor's appearance?
  - pjc50 8mo ago
    As a pretext for harassing her, it appears.
  - kuttel2 8mo ago
    [dead]
- nutjob2 8mo ago
  > I'm getting a whiff of far-left activism. I think you're getting a whiff of yourself.
ddtaylor 8mo ago
I 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 8mo ago
[flagged]
- zb3 8mo ago
  [flagged]
- mikkupikku 8mo ago
  I 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 8mo ago
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 :)
- asddubs 8mo 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 8mo 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.
drakythe 8mo ago
Obviously 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 8mo ago
Tbh 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 8mo ago
I 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 8mo ago
Quite 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 8mo ago
  Codes 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 8mo ago
It'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 8mo ago
  The 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 8mo ago
Yet another open source drama fest. Can’t be bothered. I’ll buy the best product at cheapest. I can use two stores.
verytrivial 8mo ago
I 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 8mo ago
C’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 8mo ago
Incredible 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 8mo ago
  i 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 8mo 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
    - asddubs 8mo ago
      wow, I recommend people read the linked thread, it basically completely exonerates the "employee who made a hate site" with receipts. I came into this thinking adafruit was in the right, but wow
rlt 8mo ago
I 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.
- asddubs 8mo ago
  Nick is the person who made the website, not nate.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- andromaton 8mo ago
  Except Paul.
  - notthetup 8mo ago
    Paul feels like the only adult in this room.
disqard 8mo ago
I 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 8mo ago
Wait 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 8mo ago
[deleted]
MarcoDotIO 8mo ago
So 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 8mo ago
Another CoC fight.
adolph 8mo ago
Wow, what a way to celebrate the birthday of a certain tech CEO by crashing-out in a similar way. This is very disappointing.
barishnamazov 8mo ago
It's amusing to me that the path for this announcement is "/official-response". That's a top level path with a generic name! :-)
ajb 8mo ago
This 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 8mo ago
[flagged]
- ptorrone 8mo ago
  disagree, and we are not autistic.
  - LoganDark 8mo ago
    your 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 ago
      the person said we are "autistic new york jews"
      - LoganDark 8mo ago
        yeah I don't think that's accurate at all (or coherent?)
  - kuttel2 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - LeafItAlone 8mo ago
      This is not acceptable behavior on this forum.
      - kuttel2 8mo ago
        [dead]
      - krapp 8mo ago
        They know. Most of these green troll accounts are alts of older, established accounts that don't want to risk their karma and a ban on their main account. Don't bother interacting with them. Just flag them and move on.
userbinator 8mo ago
Never 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 8mo ago
  Adafruit manufactures its own PCB's in New York, though the actual chips, leds, etc. come from wherever, which is often China.
  - 15155 8mo ago
    They 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 8mo ago
This is embarrassing and doesn’t belong in HN
LeafItAlone 8mo ago
This 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 8mo ago
Ignoring 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 8mo ago
This 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 8mo ago
  Why does this make you think of park tools?
Brian_K_White 8mo ago
Since any such CoC violation is very much merely a claim and not a fact, this should probably be flagged.
andromaton 8mo ago
Probably 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 8mo 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 ago
  Paul is awesome. Seems to be stuck in the middle of Adafruit and SparkFun duking it out.
camb416 8mo ago
Such drama. I’m going back to BX-24s and dusting off the 1st edition Igoe book.
arthurcolle 8mo ago
Feels like a breakup. Damn that sucks, can you get a mediator maybe? Think of the children...
Animats 8mo ago
So the drama. What do I read to find out what this is about? And should I care?
- simgt 8mo ago
  It'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 8mo ago
It feels to me like this should have gone through private arbitration rather than public accusations.
likiiio 8mo ago
I 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 8mo ago
  Oh I missed that detail, where did they threaten?
phendrenad2 8mo ago
Wow, 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.

504 points by yaleman 8mo ago

vasco 8mo ago

Seeing 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 8mo ago

I 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 8mo 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 ago

As someone from Generation-X, all of this is wildly amusing to me. Yes, I am getting old.

c64d81744074dfa 8mo ago

sigh 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 ago

after 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!"

ramblurr 8mo ago

Obviously 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.

rpcope1 8mo ago
Maybe 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?
reactordev 8mo ago
One 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.

echelon 8mo ago

Why 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 8mo ago
I 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 8mo ago
  Yeah, 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 8mo ago
  [deleted]
cogman10 8mo 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 8mo ago
  Hmm, but the accusations are so vague that it's going to be even more speculation, don't you think?
  - cogman10 8mo ago

mosura 8mo ago

The 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 8mo ago
I 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 8mo ago
  From 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 8mo ago
    [flagged]
  - b112 8mo ago
    Commas 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 8mo ago
      You'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!

progbits 8mo 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 8mo ago
Adafruit'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 8mo ago
  That certainly doesn't come off well for SparkFun.
- Traubenfuchs 8mo ago

sorcix 8mo ago

The URL for this page is very generic and bound to become a 404 page. Thinking about URLs is important to prevent link rot.

hrimfaxi 8mo ago
Almost like it's by design.
- smeeagain2 8mo ago
  [flagged]
- Dylan16807 8mo ago
  Is "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 8mo ago
Agreed. 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 8mo ago
Sparkfun 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 8mo ago
The URL for this page is clearly a knee-jerk reaction. I don't expect it will survive the week.

palmotea 8mo ago

Ok, 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 8mo ago
[flagged]
- buellerbueller 8mo ago
  Sparkfun 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 8mo ago
    Also it implies that the other side has already made public accusations that sparkfun wants to set straight. What's that info, if any?
- timmmmmmay 8mo ago
  if 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 8mo 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 8mo ago

To 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 8mo ago
What would you have them publish instead? Your curiosity does not overcome the right to privacy of those involved.
- csomar 8mo ago
  In my opinion, you either publish everything and every detail or simply publish nothing. Here is the tl;dr: My business partner sucks and is a bad person. I am not going to say what he did but he sucks. I am cutting him off.
- mohaine 8mo ago
  It seems like releasing more would have probably broken the exact same rules they are claiming AdaFruit broke.
  - notatoad 8mo ago
    if 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 8mo 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.

adathrowaway 8mo ago

[flagged]

oofbey 8mo ago
Please tell us more
- dec0dedab0de 8mo ago
  PT 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 8mo ago
"adathrowaway" seems only made to come here and post things that are not true? seem my post here, and ask anything.

ptorrone 8mo ago

hi, 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!

axus 8mo ago
Links to "hate sites, photoshopped images, and harassment"?
qwe----3 8mo ago
[flagged]
- nickdurfe 8mo ago
  It's not difficult for me at all; I can understand it quite well.
- vultour 8mo ago
  It's funny because he tried to excuse it in another comment by saying he's using speech-to-text. I really don't understand what this lie was supposed to accomplish since he seems to be the only person using a STT system incapable of proper capitalisation.

iterance 8mo ago

Hmm... reads a bit like an email a forum moderator might send a disobedient user. This seems strange, verging on unprofessional, for corporate communications.

skybrian 8mo ago

I 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 8mo ago
Drama 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 8mo ago
  AdaFruit 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 8mo 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 8mo ago

Wait, does this mean that all adafruit items for sale on sparkfun.com are going to be on a clearance sale?

londons_explore 8mo ago
Looks to me like they'll just dispose of the stock and not sell it.
- burnte 8mo 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...
napkinartist 8mo ago
[dead]
HWR_14 8mo ago
No, 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 8mo 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 8mo ago
    The question was about Adafruit products on Sparkfun. This answer is about Teensies on Adafruit.

stego-tech 8mo ago

Gotta 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 8mo ago
It’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 8mo ago
  Okay? 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 8mo ago
Are you one of those pro-skub hooligans? https://pbfcomics.com/comics/skub/ https://pbfcomics.com/comics/skub/
- stego-tech 8mo ago
  Nah, 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 8mo ago

I miss the days when we would get Ruby Drama like this every week.

Perz1val 8mo ago
Those guys migrated to Rust and are too busy pleasing the borrow checker now
- deleted 8mo ago
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- deleted 8mo ago
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- deepriverfish 8mo ago
  Until they there's a post about Zig/C/C++ and they come out of the woods asking why it wasn't written in Rust.

chaosprint 8mo ago

I 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 8mo ago
Meh 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 8mo ago
  Damn that's a considerable body of work.

Dangeranger 8mo ago

For 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 8mo ago
For more context: There's also social media posts accusing ptorrone of engaging in harassment campaigns against other people.
xyzzyxy 8mo ago
For 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 8mo ago

The 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 8mo ago
Right, then why are you publicizing / dramatizing your own disgust?
- calvinmorrison 8mo ago
  tu quo que
  - threethirtytwo 8mo ago
    I'm not condemning public drama. I support public drama. I'm questioning you, specifically.
    - calvinmorrison 8mo ago
      ok
      - threethirtytwo 8mo ago
        Are you going to answer the question?
        calvinmorrison 8mo ago
        no
        threethirtytwo 8mo ago

dec0dedab0de 8mo ago

I 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 8mo ago

[flagged]

squigz 8mo ago
What's wrong with that? She's working... at a computer... while holding her baby in a carrier?
- alangibson 8mo ago
  FFS, 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 8mo ago

I'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.

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
notaustinpowers 8mo ago
This 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 8mo ago
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- deleted 8mo ago
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chinathrow 8mo ago
Reading this, it looks like everyone needs a break.
RobotToaster 8mo ago
This 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?
- valdiorn 8mo ago
  I have to say; they all sound like whining babies with the emotional integrity of a 13 year old hormonal teenager. And these people run major businesses? And the complaining about doxxing because he posted the person's email address? Grow up, mate.

YouAreWRONGtoo 8mo ago

[dead]

cobalt60 8mo ago

Nice 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 8mo ago

Why 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 8mo ago
It'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 8mo ago
  Ok, ok, I exaggerated. But still, communuty is small, and the industry is big, and drama seems to be handled very differently in both
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

cbeach 8mo ago

[flagged]

ptorrone 8mo ago
why talk about limor's appearance?
- pjc50 8mo ago
  As a pretext for harassing her, it appears.
- kuttel2 8mo ago
  [dead]
nutjob2 8mo ago
> I'm getting a whiff of far-left activism. I think you're getting a whiff of yourself.

ddtaylor 8mo ago

I 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 8mo ago

[flagged]

zb3 8mo ago
[flagged]
mikkupikku 8mo ago
I 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 8mo ago

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 :)

asddubs 8mo 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 8mo 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.

drakythe 8mo ago

Obviously 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 8mo ago

Tbh 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 8mo ago

I 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 8mo ago

Quite 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 8mo ago
Codes 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 8mo ago

It'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 8mo ago
The 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 8mo ago

Yet another open source drama fest. Can’t be bothered. I’ll buy the best product at cheapest. I can use two stores.

verytrivial 8mo ago

I 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 8mo ago

C’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 8mo ago

Incredible 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 8mo ago
i 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 8mo 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
  - asddubs 8mo ago
    wow, I recommend people read the linked thread, it basically completely exonerates the "employee who made a hate site" with receipts. I came into this thinking adafruit was in the right, but wow

rlt 8mo ago

I 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.

asddubs 8mo ago
Nick is the person who made the website, not nate.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
andromaton 8mo ago
Except Paul.
- notthetup 8mo ago
  Paul feels like the only adult in this room.

disqard 8mo ago

I 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 8mo ago

Wait 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 8mo ago

[deleted]

MarcoDotIO 8mo ago

So 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 8mo ago

Another CoC fight.

adolph 8mo ago

Wow, what a way to celebrate the birthday of a certain tech CEO by crashing-out in a similar way. This is very disappointing.

barishnamazov 8mo ago

It's amusing to me that the path for this announcement is "/official-response". That's a top level path with a generic name! :-)

ajb 8mo ago

This 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 8mo ago

[flagged]

ptorrone 8mo ago
disagree, and we are not autistic.
- LoganDark 8mo ago
  your 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 ago
    the person said we are "autistic new york jews"
    - LoganDark 8mo ago
      yeah I don't think that's accurate at all (or coherent?)
- kuttel2 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - LeafItAlone 8mo ago
    This is not acceptable behavior on this forum.
    - kuttel2 8mo ago
      [dead]
    - krapp 8mo ago
      They know. Most of these green troll accounts are alts of older, established accounts that don't want to risk their karma and a ban on their main account. Don't bother interacting with them. Just flag them and move on.

userbinator 8mo ago

Never 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 8mo ago
Adafruit manufactures its own PCB's in New York, though the actual chips, leds, etc. come from wherever, which is often China.
- 15155 8mo ago
  They 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 8mo ago

This is embarrassing and doesn’t belong in HN

LeafItAlone 8mo ago

This 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 8mo ago

Ignoring 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 8mo ago

This 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 8mo ago
Why does this make you think of park tools?

Brian_K_White 8mo ago

Since any such CoC violation is very much merely a claim and not a fact, this should probably be flagged.

andromaton 8mo ago

Probably 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 8mo 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 ago
Paul is awesome. Seems to be stuck in the middle of Adafruit and SparkFun duking it out.

camb416 8mo ago

Such drama. I’m going back to BX-24s and dusting off the 1st edition Igoe book.

arthurcolle 8mo ago

Feels like a breakup. Damn that sucks, can you get a mediator maybe? Think of the children...

Animats 8mo ago

So the drama. What do I read to find out what this is about? And should I care?

simgt 8mo ago
It'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 8mo ago

It feels to me like this should have gone through private arbitration rather than public accusations.

likiiio 8mo ago

I 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 8mo ago
Oh I missed that detail, where did they threaten?

phendrenad2 8mo ago

Wow, 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.