[HN Gopher] SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Vio...
___________________________________________________________________
SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation
Author : yaleman
Score : 333 points
Date : 2026-01-14 14:34 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sparkfun.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sparkfun.com)
| ramblurr wrote:
| 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.
| reactordev wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Hmm, but the accusations are so vague that it's going to be
| even more speculation, don't you think?
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yes, and that speculation is going to be entirely around
| "what did adafruit do" and not "what did sparkfun do".
| bluGill wrote:
| There is no such thing as bad publicity...
| LightHugger wrote:
| > 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.
|
| This aspect is not very surprising, it is _usually_ moral high
| grounders who end up found to be doing something wrong, people
| like to compensate and try to put down others when they know
| they are in the wrong.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > I'm surprised AdaFruit did something wrong here.
|
| You don't actually know that for a fact.
| mosura wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!
| b112 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!
| relaxing wrote:
| Offensive sexual images and behavior would fall under the
| first clause.
|
| Then you're left with the "my tasteful nudes aren't
| offensive" defense to which the response is "but they are
| off topic".
|
| Presumably that means your biometric sensing vibrator
| hacking tutorial is still legal.
| philipallstar wrote:
| It's so the wrong opinion can be selectively enforced
| against.
| mindslight wrote:
| Just guessing it's to cover pictures of electronic projects
| involving body parts that are normally covered and/or
| risque attire?
| echoangle wrote:
| The list is supposed to be read as "offensive jokes", not
| any joke at all.
| adolph wrote:
| > sexual images are only a problem if they are gratuitous
| or off-topic
|
| Well if someone was working on something like a medical
| device there might be some documentation that could be
| interpreted as sexual but that documenting it was not
| gratuitous.
| crumpled wrote:
| The image would have to be topical, and the sexual nature
| would have to be necessary (not-gratuitous) for it to be
| compliant with that CoC.
|
| I'd be surprised if such an image can exist in an
| electronics forum because those parameters are pretty
| narrow. I also don't interpret policy as disallowing _any_
| form of joke.
|
| I'm not about to go hunting, but I think I would find a
| good number of good non-offensive jokes, and probably no
| instances of sexual imagery.
| sorcix wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Almost like it's by design.
| dieggsy wrote:
| Agreed. Because of this (and regardless), archive everything:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20260114140733/https://www.spark...
| alnwlsn wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The URL for this page is clearly a knee-jerk reaction. I don't
| expect it will survive the week.
| progbits wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Adafruit's response seems to be here:
| https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-...
| (via 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 wrote:
| That certainly doesn't come off well for SparkFun.
| palmotea wrote:
| 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.
| Dangeranger wrote:
| This post [0] suggests that leadership at SparkFun has been
| engaged in a long term harassment campaign targeting the
| founder of AdaFruit (Limor Fried) using company resources, and
| is allegedly using their CoC as a smokescreen to cover up their
| own bad behavior and cast blame on the victim.
|
| [0] https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-
| teensy-...
| drastic9 wrote:
| Yeah but this post is not necessarily the truth. This person
| has ahem interesting history.
| https://chaos.social/@North/115605819126197877
| RobotToaster wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| What would you have them publish instead? Your curiosity does
| not overcome the right to privacy of those involved.
| mohaine wrote:
| It seems like releasing more would have probably broken the
| exact same rules they are claiming AdaFruit broke.
| notatoad wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| danesparza wrote:
| Yes, but Sparkfun didn't "release nothing", and now they
| are opening themselves up to a libel suit.
|
| It would have been far better had they not published
| anything at this point.
| pepperball wrote:
| Don't attention whore on the internet if you want privacy.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > What would you have them publish instead?
|
| The statement that is published places blame, if not
| accusations of criminal behaviour, on their business partner.
|
| IOW, they already overshared with the intent of damaging the
| reputation of their business partner.
|
| In my mind, they are already behind; had they released the
| standard business line "Our relationship with $X has come to
| an end; we apologise for any inconvenience caused" I wouldn't
| be so quick to judge them.
|
| But, now I *am judging them, because they clearly felt
| personally aggrieved by what happened, enough to imply the
| worst without actually coming out and saying what happened.
| behringer wrote:
| nobody wants corporate speak. They are saying they are
| cutting ties and it's not their fault. No harm in that if
| it's true.
| 306bobby wrote:
| There certainly could be harm if it's false though, which
| is the whole point. And they did not give any information
| to affirm who's fault (if anyone) it was besides hearsay
| behringer wrote:
| that's not the point as far as I can tell. The parent was
| saying the remarks were oversharing, not false.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > No harm in that if it's true.
|
| Same as saying "Behringer is a convicted paedophile": no
| harm if it's true, right?
| behringer wrote:
| Are you saying they're lying? That's a different issue
| than what I understood him to mean "it's unprofessional".
| It's flat out illegal.
| Twirrim wrote:
| Nothing. They could just cut ties and be done with it.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > Your curiosity does not overcome the right to privacy of
| those involved.
|
| I agree in principle, but is there an actual _right_ to
| privacy in this instance?
|
| I'm asking this in the legal sense, not a moral sense.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| There is no right to privacy, but they may have an NDA.
| Also, if they get too specific, they could open themselves
| up to a libel lawsuit. Though, if they were consulting a
| lawyer I don't think there would be any release. Simply cut
| business ties, and move on, it happens all the time, and
| would leave room to patch things up later.
| danesparza wrote:
| "they could open themselves up to a libel lawsuit."
|
| They already have.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I think in this case it would be Defamation. But the
| claim is generic enough to be provable (ie private
| matter, private emails, CoC violation)
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| Libel is a type of defamation. Just to be pedantic.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Something more concrete like "on Tuesday at 9pm an adafruit
| employee sent an aggressive email which violated our COC by
| calling one of our employees a 'stupid fuckface'".
|
| I don't think that level of detail would be a privacy
| violation legally and imo not morally either
| Hizonner wrote:
| If you can't publish a complete, detailed, specific
| description of what you're alleging, with names, dates,
| quotes, and whatever, then you publish _absolutely nothing_.
| Publishing vague and unanswerable accusations is scumbag
| behavior.
| Perz1val wrote:
| Nothing, you either want to talk about a problem or not.
| Throwing vague, empty claims is just a cheap attack on
| other's company public image
| mbreese wrote:
| I would rather they published nothing. There is no need to
| make any of this public. Just stop selling Adafruit products
| and stop selling to Adafruit. If anyone asks, then you can
| say "we don't do business with them any longer". The public
| doesn't need the rationale.
|
| That's it. Everything else is dragging the
| community/customers into a fight that they didn't ask for.
| quitit wrote:
| While SparkFun may feel entitled to air their grievances as an
| "Official response", these types of public statements aren't
| productive for business nor useful/respectful to consumers.
|
| Public notices for the consumer should serve the consumer. I.e.
| they should only relate to matters that directly concern them,
| such as notice of availability, warranty, support or the
| fulfilment of other consumers' rights. Those statements should
| be unambiguous and not allude to blame or personal tiffs.
|
| While Sparkfun's statement touches on availability it merely
| does so as a vehicle for grandstanding and retaliation through
| gossip and drama. The fact that SparkFun notes it's a "private
| matter" yet chose to involve the public also makes SparkFun
| look unprofessional, even if they are 0% at fault for the
| circumstances.
|
| Consumers put their trust in a company, it is disrespectful of
| that trust when trying to embroil them in personal affairs,
| they never agreed to that.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Yes. They really should have just put a notice up that they're
| no longer distributing AdaFruit products and direct people to
| Adafruit website.
| ptorrone wrote:
| hi, phil here -- post on adafruit here:
| 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!
| Y_Y wrote:
| Have you also been embargoed from buying shift keys?
| reincarnate0x14 wrote:
| I laughed way too hard at this. Also, I can't even read some
| of these statements with a straight face because all the
| project and company names sound completely ridiculous when
| placed in serious sentences, it's like reading about
| embezzlement charges for Sesame Street characters.
| frereubu wrote:
| I needed a good laugh today and "reading about embezzlement
| charges for Sesame Street characters" gave me it, so:
| thanks!
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Levar Burton did get into some hot water over the Reading
| Rainbow app.
| reincarnate0x14 wrote:
| Hah, really? He's a treasure, met him a few times at
| poetry readings and such. A quick search isn't bringing
| anything up but google has been failing me a lot lately.
| Or I'm failing at google a lot lately.
| mey wrote:
| Or Google is failing you lately. Seems like it's not a
| recent event, which Google is also REALLY bad at these
| days.
|
| https://current.org/2016/03/wned-and-rrkidz-trade-
| lawsuits-o...
| ptorrone wrote:
| speech to text, with a newborn, replying to these and feeding
| her. i cannot purchase shift keys if they are on sparkfun,
| yes.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Weird that your STT doesn't handle capitals, but that's a
| good excuse. Sounds like you're having a challenging day, I
| hope my snarky joke wasn't too annoying.
| deng wrote:
| > I hope my snarky joke wasn't too annoying
|
| Don't worry, he always writes like this.
| komali2 wrote:
| I think it's a trend among tech founders, I've seen some
| on Twitter doing it, and then a bunch of hanger-ons
| copying the behavior.
| renewiltord wrote:
| You're right. Sam Altman does this and others repeat it
| like people used to wear black turtlenecks.
| palmotea wrote:
| Not just tech founders. Jeffrey Epstein writing is just
| atrocious. Like how does anyone habitually use a commas
| ,, like this?
|
| I've heard it referred to as a "flex," basically doing
| something stupid to rub it in that you can get away with
| it.
| georgemcbay wrote:
| I think it goes back a lot further than Twitter.
|
| As someone who hung out on IRC way back in the 1990s (and
| internet-knew Limor from Adafruit back before her handle
| was Ladyada) I associate this writing style with the
| culture of a lot of the hacker-related IRC channels I
| used to hang out in back then.
|
| Some of the same people from that era did in fact turn
| out to be tech founders and maybe that's how it got
| carried over into the Twitter-verse, but it predates
| that.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Explanation:
| https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm
| kleiba wrote:
| Congratulations! (assuming you're the parent)
| cloudfudge wrote:
| If not, congratulations on the heist.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| You are doing damage control on a public forum. Your
| writing should be precise and neat if you don't wish to
| appear unprofessional and goaded into responding. Normally,
| badly written prose is just annoying; here it is harmful to
| your cause.
| zxcvasd wrote:
| valuing style over substance is folly.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| It is clearly a deliberate choice to send the signal of
| conforming to a particular type of non-conformance. It's
| a costly signal because most people will see it as having
| the emotional maturity of a child, it signals to others
| that given their social status they can afford that self
| imposed handicap.
| zxcvasd wrote:
| years and years and years of ptorrone's posts aren't
| capitalized, though. it's not like they suddenly decided
| today, for the purposes of this post, to change their
| writing style.
|
| in any case, i prefer to decide whether someone has the
| "emotional maturity of a child" based on _what_ they say,
| not whether they push their shift key.
| account42 wrote:
| Perhaps but in this case the style does make it harder to
| read the substance.
| monooso wrote:
| *poorly written prose
| layer8 wrote:
| Looking at your comment history, it's clear that you're
| lying. You simply don't care.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Perhaps a foot pedal? Maybe Adafruit could make one.
| 1-more wrote:
| Adafruit is maybe an all time amazing success story built
| on giving more of a shit than anyone else. There is a
| direct through line from reading MAKE in high school
| through programming the 8 LED POV thing through the rest of
| my career. Limor doesn't answer a forum question on a
| Sunday morning in like 2008 and I don't make my mortgage
| payment this month and my son gets store brand formula. I
| wish you every success professionally and in this new
| chapter with your tiny miracle, and I hope for an amicable
| resolution to this whole Sparkfun thing.
| spankalee wrote:
| What?
|
| Your other posts have capital letters for technical
| abbreviations and "Sparkfun", but not for "I" and the first
| letter of sentences.
|
| Sorry, from a bystander this looks like a straight-up lie,
| and why lie about such a small thing? It brings into
| question the truth of your other statements. Just say you
| like the style if that's the truth.
| ptorrone wrote:
| some are already words/abbreivations that are in my word
| list and some are me typing over later when i can, and
| some is a cut/paste if limor has something for me to add
| or does an edit as she looks at things. you can see my
| writings on the adafruit blog have caps, commenting on
| forums or hackersnews quickly, there will be some things
| someone does not like. we were at the doc with our 2
| month old during this ...
| https://x.com/ptorrone/status/2011509017814659095
| YackerLose wrote:
| Typing in all lowercase makes you look more vulnerable, it's
| a pretty common rhetorical tactic in PR.
| bredren wrote:
| I had never noticed this before. Can you point at any
| examples?
|
| I have long noticed high profile people going to court with
| some kind of cast on, though.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I heard that altman does it. I don't care about him
| enough to check though. More silly gimmicks like holmes
| talking in a mans voice or jobs wearing the same turtle
| neck
| layer8 wrote:
| Uh, no, it makes you look careless and unprofessional.
| naasking wrote:
| How it's perceived is no doubt in the eye of the
| beholder. I can totally see how some people would
| associate this writing style with children, and so
| associate it with "vulnerable".
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| Agree, it makes it seem like the individual is "one of us"
| and that what they're saying is a little more raw/genuine.
|
| "They're being mean to me." vs "theyre being mean to me".
| drcongo wrote:
| I have no idea what any of this thread is about, but I'm sure
| the thing that I'm going to remember next time I need to buy
| something from one of these two is that one of them can be
| bothered to use capital letters, so I'll use them.
| nanomonkey wrote:
| some of us are anti-capitalist
| Lerc wrote:
| I was going to ask more about your philosophy, but after
| collapsing all of the other replies, I got to see what you
| were replying to.
|
| I fear the page formatting caused an entirely respectable
| joke to be lost to many people
| phkahler wrote:
| No questions. Just move on. Engaging in public spectacle isn't
| a good look for anyone.
| freedomben wrote:
| That's normally good advice, but this is a small enough niche
| that trust-in-brand matters a great deal. Right now AdaFruit
| is looking like the villain here. I think a little more
| transparency from them is a very good thing if they don't
| want to suffer massive brand damage.
|
| Definitely avoid ad hominems, and focus purely on facts.
| Provide what information/evidence you can without violating
| agreements, but only if it's relevant to the situation and
| includes as much context as possible.
| knorker wrote:
| No in this case addressing the accusation is necessary.
|
| I think what's currently been said is sufficient. You need to
| make a grown up version of the statement "None of that is
| true", but yes probably best to leave it at that.
|
| Honestly, this being Adafruit, my default assumption is to
| believe them. Especially with this super vague "please read
| between the lines because if I actually say something false
| it'll be libel" accusation.
| swed420 wrote:
| Wouldn't be the first time CoC was used as a lame attempt to
| harm open source.
|
| Thanks for speaking up.
| allreduce wrote:
| I find it weird to jump to this from the scarce information
| we have.
|
| "Someone did a CoC violation" is just a way for an org to say
| "someone was an asshole to such an extent it was driving
| other people away or getting us into legal trouble", with the
| manner of assholery defined in the CoC. 9/10 times it is
| nothing sinister.
|
| Of course right now we just don't know what happened.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The one thing I know is that for threads such as this one
| it is best to ignore all of the stuff from accounts made
| just for the purpose of participating in the thread.
| xyzzyxy wrote:
| In this case, given the topic of this thread is targeted
| harassment in response to public social media criticism,
| I think it's understandable that some folks might like to
| participate anonymously to avoid becoming a future
| target.
| grugagag wrote:
| Are you HR or something?
| allreduce wrote:
| Nah but I recognize that HR, unfortunately, has to exist
| for larger organizations.
|
| Unless you have an infinitely wise and patient dictator
| who can just say "you're an asshole, you go" and always
| make the right call or something.
| swed420 wrote:
| > I find it weird to jump to this from the scarce
| information we have.
|
| If you look at how I worded my comment, you'll see I didn't
| jump to any conclusion. Only you have, apparently.
|
| (edit: Also unsurprising to see your account is two days
| old)
| MaKey wrote:
| Overall I think Code of Conducts are a net negative. Alleged
| violations of them seem to be used to lend credibility to
| actions that otherwise would be hard(er) to justify.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| This is nothing to do with Code of Conduct and just one
| business chosing not to do business with another.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| This is like saying "overall laws are bad" because whoever
| is applying them is doing so maliciously. Even in the
| absence of COC companies like this always find a way to
| justify this sort of pressure. If not a COC, it's a TOS or
| NDA or whatever document acronym you can find.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Overall I wish we lived in a world where they are not
| needed. But in every community, some people are assholes so
| they are often needed.
| MaKey wrote:
| Communities were doing just fine without a CoC up until
| they became a trend. People got banned too but the
| moderators couldn't hide behind a CoC to justify
| questionable decisions.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Communities were doing just fine without a CoC
|
| I mean kinda, but also not. CoCs just codify what the
| moderators think.
|
| Even Hacker news has a CoC:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html its just
| called a guide.
|
| A community has to have a set of rules which most people
| agree on. One of the most common attacks in a moderated
| forum is "Oh but X did Y" and "thats not fair X can do
| it"
|
| A CoC can be a simple way to "tap the sign" when someone
| is being a dick.
|
| It also allows communities to set expectations at the
| start, not after someone has transgressed and pissed in
| the well.
|
| In an ideal world, you'd just have a thing that says
| "don't be a dick" but that doesn't work for many and
| hilarious reasons. Engineers who who either have a god
| complex, parsing issues or empathy gaps (either learnt or
| inherent ) are notoriously difficult as a community to
| keep from getting into frothy arguments that colour
| everything and give off a bad smell.
|
| CoCs are a tool, that can sometimes help.
| none_to_remain wrote:
| I perceive "guidelines" or "rules" having a very
| different connotation compared to a "code of conduct."
|
| See for, example, the SQLite team adopting the Rule of
| St. Benedict as their "Code of Conduct," getting
| criticized for it, and changing it to a "Code of Ethics"
| in accordance with the Rule about seeking accommodation
| with your adversaries.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| Communities were not doing fine. CoC didn't come out of
| nowhere because someone was bored. Having a CoC doesn't
| absolve moderators any more than having laws absolves
| judges from having to make good rulings.
| account42 wrote:
| It just means you get different kinds of assholes who are
| better at navigating around the CoC or even weaponizing
| it.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Yes but it was always this way. Any organisation with
| rules can suffer from rules lawyers as a lot of people
| who have tried to contribute to wilipedia/serve on a
| committee of a voluntary organisation etc will testify.
| 15155 wrote:
| They're a weapon of "social justice" - 90% of CoC rules are
| common-sense stuff that doesn't have to be said, combined
| with one or two "progressive" ideas shoehorned in.
| swed420 wrote:
| And "social justice" is often a weapon of capital
| interests in disguise.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I was once told I couldn't present a calorie
| counting/diet app at an Elm conference because it
| violated their CoC about discrimination based on "body
| size".
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Mate, thats just rules. rules you don't agree with.
| 15155 wrote:
| Often these "rules" extend to conduct far outside of the
| purview of a project - typically crossing into identity
| politics.
|
| "If you espouse views I don't like on your personal
| Twitter, you can't contribute to this entirely unrelated
| software project."
| thunderfork wrote:
| This can sometimes, in practice, be reasonable. If
| letting muh_dick_1488 open PRs means everyone else stops
| contributing, well, you're gonna have to pick a group to
| keep.
| chasd00 wrote:
| It just dawned on me that CoC docs are basically HR for
| open source. Point to a violation and voila, that person is
| gone. "Sorry, nothing personal, CoC violation, there's
| nothing I can do".
| MaKey wrote:
| Exactly. Without a CoC the persons making hard decisions
| have to stand behind them. With a CoC they can hide
| behind the CoC and wash their hands in innocence. This
| lowers the barrier for making questionable decisions and
| overall decreases honesty. We've seen this with the
| suspension of Python core maintainer Tim Peters.
| echelon wrote:
| I had never heard of the Tim Peters incident, but I just
| googled it. (It's not on his Wikipedia page.)
|
| I found this:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1ep4dbt/the_sham
| efu...
|
| Which points to this:
|
| https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-
| defenestr...
|
| This characterizes it as completely unfair, and the
| /r/python community seems to agree.
|
| Is there a rebuttal from the other side?
| rpdillon wrote:
| Wow, I somehow missed all that. That's horrendous. I've
| always felt that a code of conduct is a tool for
| bureaucrats to hide behind, and episode doesn't alter my
| view. Thanks for sharing.
| pamcake wrote:
| There are bad CoCs and ways to abuse them and people who
| do. That doesn't mean the concept of setting social
| expectations for a collaborative project is inherently bad.
| Same as for discussion forum guidelines and moderation.
|
| No CoC is better than a bad CoC or one where interpretation
| is centralized to someone with an agenda. But many times a
| decent CoC can help newcomers in reading the room and
| support well-intended moderators in making judgement calls.
|
| I also think good CoCs are small and mostly reactive. It's
| premature social engineering to spend energy on formulating
| general policies for things that happened once or twice if
| ever for the project.
|
| Like, maybe wait until you actually had a couple of slop
| PRs before spending time, energy, and political capital on
| an AI contribution policy.
| napkinartist wrote:
| This post is not a good look. You come off as quite snide. In
| particular, things like "Sparkfun will not?", calling a CoC
| concern a weirdo behavior, responding to harassment allegations
| by saying the did it first.
|
| This seems very much like two businesses experiencing friction
| and separating, which happens all the time. You coming in and
| framing the flames makes doesn't scan particularly positively
| to me.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Why do I need to prove I'm human to read your blog?
| systemtest wrote:
| Because of enshitification of the internet you now need to
| solve puzzles before you can access websites. Welcome to
| 2026.
| tyre wrote:
| Because AI scraping is everywhere and flooding sites with
| useless traffic. It's not ideal, but it's the best people can
| do atm
| embedding-shape wrote:
| What kind of blog gets flooded by what, 10/100 req/s at
| max? Seems somewhere along the line we forgot how to deploy
| and run infrastructure on the internet, if some basic
| scrapers manage to down your website.
| systemtest wrote:
| "It's not ideal" is an understatement, I have to do stupid
| captchas for about half my Google searches.
| Bjartr wrote:
| Can't speak specifically for this site, but these days many
| prove-you're-human tests have been added because of
| overzealous AI scraping eating server resources unnecessarily
| and to an unreasonable and excessive degree.
| BirAdam wrote:
| Glad to hear that there will by an open source option. This
| honestly makes the Teensy/Freensy an option for me where before
| it wasn't.
|
| Is there any thought to expanding the Freensy lineup beyond a
| pure clone?
| _blk wrote:
| Looks like you guys are handling it right from a consumer
| standpoint. Thanks for letting us know and for not playing the
| fingerpointing game in public. Looks like you're not playing at
| all and just moving on. Nice.
| napkinartist wrote:
| The post you are replying to literally is playing the finger
| pointing game. They level accusations right back at spark
| fun.
|
| I have zero skin in this game, and personally think the right
| move is for Adafruit to simply say, "We wish Sparkfun the
| best of luck" and move on, but the post you are responding to
| is clearly looking for a public fight.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > "We wish Sparkfun the best of luck"
|
| This would mean admitting the allegations are 100% true and
| harming their business even more with the risk of losing it
| all in worst case. Now we can assume it's not as simple as
| SparkFun makes it. It's a dirty situation, but necessary,
| and justified if they are really a victim.
|
| > but the post you are responding to is clearly looking for
| a public fight.
|
| SparkFun started the war, AdaFruit seem to only defend
| here.
| 827a wrote:
| If it means anything, the first thought I had reading this post
| was "I wonder how SparkFun is exaggerating or misrepresenting
| this situation, because I can't believe Adafruit of all
| organizations is in the wrong here."
| Dangeranger wrote:
| See additional context for the accusation(s) here[0].
|
| [0] https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-
| teensy-...
| sergiotapia wrote:
| still vague as hell lol
| oytis wrote:
| I need to see the photoshops!
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| > sparkfun chose to publish a vague public accusation. once
| you do that, speculation is inevitable.
|
| Ok sure, but the explanation provided strikes me as equally
| vague. I don't think anyone who isn't familiar with this
| situation has any idea what the hell is going on between
| these two orgs tbh.
|
| If a dispassionate observer can't figure out situation
| without significant effort, then it's very easy to handwave
| this away as unimportant.
|
| Personally I'd very much hate for that to happen here if
| something truly noteworthy happened.
| wrigby wrote:
| The fact that the Adafruit team continued that thread
| unabashedly after Paul Stoffregen's first reply is an awful
| look in my opinion. Doesn't seem like anyone here is
| behaving like adults.
|
| Edit: I should clarify - Paul seems very much like a mature
| adult in all of this.
| Gracana wrote:
| Wow, and it gets worse from there. I think Paul is smart
| to let Phil drag him on his own forum rather than let him
| go blow up on social media for getting banned.
| Alupis wrote:
| My take away from this link is not what Adafruit probably
| wants.
|
| > we told sparkfun they needed to get their house in order
|
| > that was the big issue i wanted them to get some hr
| training on, or _something_
|
| You don't _tell_ or demand another company do something
| with their own employees. There 's more professional ways
| of dealing with a situation like this.
|
| Request a meeting. Send a calm, collected, professional
| email to a decision-maker and be sure it's well sourced and
| factual. Keep things in private.
|
| If the other party decides not to take action, then make a
| decision if you want to continue doing business with them.
| Do not keep pressuring them for the outcome _you_ want, do
| not escalate the situation, and certainly don 't drag the
| dirty laundry out into the public.
|
| Like, what good did Adafruit actually think was going to
| come from getting into a fight with the founder of
| Sparkfun? 50 lashings with a wet noodle?
|
| Whatever Sparkfun allegedly did to cause this, Adafruit
| looks pretty poor in this light. I've been a long time
| customer of both Adafruit and Sparkfun, and will continue
| to be - but this is some rookie, amateur, hot-headed
| behavior from Adafruit.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Yeah just to add to this pile, I've always found Adafruit to
| be one of the most reasonable companies in the space. I've
| been buying their products for a decade.
| ge96 wrote:
| Reppin my free coaster and keeb board. Reminds me of Hitec
| who would send candy with their transmitters.
|
| Also all their docs man great for noobs like me starting
| out and libraries.
| justsid wrote:
| That was my first thought as well, especially given the
| accusation of code of conduct violation. Not that I think
| that Adafruit is perfect no matter what, but I would have
| been shocked if this turned out to be true as stated.
| tedivm wrote:
| My first thought was the same. I used to like Sparkfun but
| then they closed the source of some of their projects (while
| often "forgetting" to update their website to reflect that).
| I was concerned when I saw the headline but just assumed that
| Sparkfun was probably in the wrong even before I saw the
| comments.
| milesvp wrote:
| Same. I was afraid that there was some bad egg that managed
| to get into Adafruit, or maybe someone was having a real bad
| day. You never know what kind of person someone is off
| camera, but Adafruit as a company has always managed to give
| off the most wholesome vibes.
|
| I'll be interested to see how this unfolds. I have little
| skin in the game being mostly upstream of the supply chain,
| but I've had reason to purchase from both companies, and hope
| this doesn't blow up into a huge thing.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > because I can't believe Adafruit of all organizations is in
| the wrong here.
|
| I've been hearing about this drama through a group chat for a
| long time. To be honest, neither side looks good in this one.
| Both companies have behaved disappointingly at different
| times for different reasons. I'm not doing this is an
| arbitrary "both sides" dismissal. There have been actions
| from both companies that would have been unacceptable in
| isolation.
|
| The OSHW world revolves a lot around conferences, social
| media, and IRC/Matrix/Discord servers. Not coincidentally,
| this feels a lot like old IRC and forum drama of years past.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Thanks for the message. Which IRC channel should I join?
| serf wrote:
| >so! instead of posting weirdo "code of conduct" letters..
|
| one corporate side overshares by pointing fingers and accusing
| a different corporation...
|
| so that corporation decides to be the better person, declare
| the opponent as weirdos, then proceed to point fingers at
| individuals instead for collective action from the public.
|
| nice look, both groups.
| rockskon wrote:
| Adafruit is in the wrong for not advocating for collective
| action from the public? I do not understand what exactly your
| argument is there.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Trying to parse as I am not in the know. Nate is Nate Seidle,
| CEO of SparkFun Electronics?
|
| I know SparkFun recently took over Paul Stoffregen and Robin
| Coon's Teensy production (I reached out at the time and Paul
| said it was cool).
|
| I'm guessing Adafruit got a special deal in purchasing Teensy's
| from SparkFun but because of an allegation made by you against
| Nate, they are responding by dropping your entire product line?
|
| Anyway, good luck to everyone involved. It's a small community
| of companies that provide for makers.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| I have feeling it will only hurt PJRC in the end for trusting
| sparkfun to sell and manage the teensy "brand"
| alnwlsn wrote:
| Can't say I blame them though. Paul and Robin are two
| people. Sparkfun (and Adafruit) are massive by comparison
| and have big stores that sell the same sort of stuff in
| much higher volume. The Teensys are popular. Sparkfun does
| (or at least used to do) board assembly in-house. It seems
| like a perfect match on paper.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I am completely out of loop here. I think I may have heard
| about adafruit once.
|
| Your comment seemed the most information to me (and thank you
| for that) but can you please sum up the whole controversy
| from what allegations were made and everything because I was
| sensing that adafruit was in the right earlier but (now I am
| not?)
|
| I feel like I would benefit a lot if you can tell me the
| whole controversy if possible. Thanks in advance!
| aftbit wrote:
| Oh boy, just what we need. Drama between open hardware vendors.
| Neither of these responses feels like the complete story to me.
| I hope there's a path forward to heal this rift in one way or
| another. Both SparkFun and Adafruit are doing amazing things
| for the community and I would love to see both continue to
| thrive.
| beambot wrote:
| Seems to be the inevitable trend... Just in recent times:
| Pebble drama, Arduino joining the dark side, now Sparkfun &
| Adafruit. End of an era
| ptorrone wrote:
| we are sticking with open source, arduino has moved away
| from that and sparkfun has an open-source certification
| revoked due to not being open source.
| qingcharles wrote:
| What's the drama with Pebble? I thought everything was rosy
| since the reboot?
| itintheory wrote:
| There was conflict between the new (old) hardware
| manufacturer Core Devices, and the Rebble community
| that's maintained the app store and software for the
| original Pebbles. I think they've worked it out, but it
| got ugly for a bit.
| tedivm wrote:
| Note that Sparkfun has been less and less of an "open
| hardware" vendor, as they've dropped the open aspect on some
| of their most popular projects.
| csande17 wrote:
| Appreciate the transparency! The one thing that doesn't quite
| add up for me is SparkFun accusing you of "involving a SparkFun
| customer" in the dispute. Can you comment on what that might be
| referring to?
| mort96 wrote:
| This needs a response, and my opinion will certainly be up in
| the air until I hear an explanation (or lack thereof) from
| AdaFruit.
| RA2lover wrote:
| probably mentioning on PJRC's forum they're making their own
| teensy compatible because sparkfun(Under contract by PJRC as
| the exclusive teensy manufacturer) cut them off.
|
| https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-
| teensy-...
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| Do you have a response/explanation for the two specific
| accusations about forwarding inappropriate emails to sparkfun
| employees, and involving a customer with something?
|
| Those seem extremely vague, but I didn't see them mentioned in
| the blog post.
| csande17 wrote:
| It would be deeply funny if SparkFun was referring to
| Adafruit forwarding inappropriate emails _written by SparkFun
| employees_ to SparkFun, in an attempt to report their
| harassment.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| That is exactly how I understand it at the moment. And
| depending on the material, it would be a somewhat valid
| complaint, if the report included the material without
| prior warning. Though, not valid enough to call CoC on
| this, IMHO.
| awakeasleep wrote:
| It would only be at all valid if it was forwarded to
| employees who weren't in a customer facing role.
|
| Saying that you're required to give a content warning to
| an account manager for material related to your business
| relationship puts the burden of responsibility onto the
| victim. Dealing with the psychological impact is the
| responsibility of their employer, not the customer.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| No, even in a customer-facing role, you won't have to put
| up with every s**. I mean, it's a business for
| electronics, not a porn-shop or moderation for explicit
| material at some social media-platform. There should be a
| line on what they have to tolerate.
| awakeasleep wrote:
| And the test is "did it come from my employer to a
| customer I am responsible for?"
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| From the little we know the "material" in question would
| be photoshops made to harass Limor, made by someone at
| sparkfun. So it would be weird for sparkfun to complain ,
| given the content originated with one of their employees.
| (Allegedly)
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| Yeah this is how I read it as well.
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| What's the deal with 5v, 3.3v and 24v "standards" for sensors?
| It seems like there are really three different markets and it
| sucks because crossing "lanes" is really annoying. I like how
| you all made the qwik connectors "just work", but now that I'm
| trying more industrial stuff I'm having a hard time figuring
| out how to get my 24v world to play nicely with the 3.3v world
| but of course my 24v world only wants to do SPI over 5v.
|
| Anyhoo, sorry we can't just stick to the technical drama.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > What's the deal with 5v, 3.3v and 24v "standards" for
| sensors?
|
| Historical garbage and different manufacturing technologies.
| Be happy if you can get away with only 5V and 3V3 rails in
| your project. 24V is usually to interface with industrial
| sensors. And sometimes you see 12V as well, for stuff that's
| RS232 based.
|
| And on top of that you got a fifth standard, 4..20 mA current
| loops. That one is used for long range transmission of analog
| values of a single sensor per wire pair, with 4-20 mA being
| seen as the value (4 mA = 0%, 20 mA = 100%), and anything
| less being seen as a cable break, anything higher as a short
| circuit somewhere.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| don't forget 0-10v and 2-10v analog signals.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Never used 2-10V but I learned about 0-10V when someone
| approached me to design a device to input 0-10V position
| signal and output two phase-shifted sinusoids to retrofit
| to a controller that only took resolver inputs. We
| shipped a couple dozen of them to repair broken machine
| tools. Fun project, but not going to get rich from it!
|
| I'm guessing that the 2-10V is to detect line break
| conditions?
| gmueckl wrote:
| 4 to 20mA signaling is only the start of a very specific
| rabbit hole. Someone had the brilliant idea to encode
| digital signals on top of the analog current loop. The
| result is the HART communication protocol, which is old,
| bloated, confusing, quirky - and it is really popular in
| industrial automation.
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| Ah yes, I was wondering why my ClearCore supported that,
| seemed oddly specific!
| roland35 wrote:
| Those levels are based on the electronics themselves. Earlier
| circuits used TTL which needed higher voltages to signify a
| "High". Newer CMOS based electronics need less voltage.
|
| Lower voltages help with power savings. Higher voltages can
| and do work better in high power, high noise environments
| though! 24V as you see is still very popular and useful inany
| applications.
| ptorrone wrote:
| great question! so historically microcontrollers (and
| sensors) were 5V 'CMOS' power and logic. this was way better
| than the up-to-12V for TTL logic but over time the desire for
| higher clock speeds / faster IO / lower power means the
| voltage needs to drop (since power = current * voltage lower
| voltage is lower power) the next voltage standard became
| 3.3V. these days, even 3.3V is a 'bit high' and we're seeing
| lots of device that are 1.8V or 1.65V or even 1.2V max
| (yeek!) one thing we do for all of our sensor breakouts is
| add level shifting up/down as necessary so they work with
| EITHER 5V older boards (yay no need to throw them out!) or
| with the newer 3.3V boards (woo forward compatibility) level
| shifting and regulation also reduces the risk of damage from
| over/under volting or plugging stuff in backwards. this is
| documented here: https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-
| adafruit-stemma-qt/st...
|
| maybe someone from sparkfun could post advice for you here
| too...
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| Ooh thank you! I often forget that everything is a
| capacitor/resistor/inductor all at once and i see how at
| higher frequencies that starts to matter! I think the 24v
| stuff is also more low frequency signaling over longer
| distances so rise/fall time is less of a worry but voltage
| drop / noise is perhaps more of one. Thanks!
|
| Fwiw, I'm team adafruit on this. Hope it works out for
| y'all
| alnwlsn wrote:
| Why is your "open source Teensy" [0] just an RP2350 on a Teensy
| shaped board?
|
| In my book, what makes a Teensy a Teensy is 1) hardware
| support, like 600Mhz clock, CAN, FPU, RTC, other hardware
| peripherals which the RP2350 lacks and 2) software
| compatibility with Paul Stoffregen's well documented
| Teensyduino libraries. I would not buy something else if I
| needed these features.
|
| Do you plan to do a port? Why not build around the same
| IMXRT1062? Are you barred from buying Paul's bootloader chips
| [1]?
|
| [0] https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-
| teensy-...
|
| [1] https://www.pjrc.com/store/ic_mkl02_t4.html
| rafram wrote:
| It looks like it's just a set of bullet points on a forum
| thread, not anything like a final design, so go post that
| comment there.
| ptorrone wrote:
| hi, great question. we have to start with something and while
| the RP2350 is not going to beat a 600mhz m7 it is much less
| expensive, fast to get, has lots of nifty support libraries
| available, and will definitely do better than the teensy 3.2
| which many folks loved so much (and was discontinued during
| the chip shortage). this is also a great time to add things
| that we always wanted in the teensy: SWD debug, built in 8 MB
| storage, lipoly battery charging, open source bootloader,
| open hardware design. stuff like CAN is supported via PIO
| (https://github.com/KevinOConnor/can2040), as is USB host on
| any two adjacent pins. M33 has FPU, and the dormant/RTC mode
| for the RP2350 is 10uA (see
| https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-
| pico/...). other 'teensiriffic' things like NeoPixel DMA
| support is well supported by PIO on the RP2350. as well as
| I2S audio.
|
| as for the bootloader chip: we don't want to trade one
| closed-single-source component for another. if we're going to
| make something it should be fully open source as much as we
| can!
|
| finally, for teensyduino libraries that you love: there's no
| reason they cant be ported (we did an audio port for the
| samd51) - which specific library are you referring to?
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Right, but you're not really competing on processor speed.
| You're competing on maturity of peripherals where the RP
| doesn't really match up PIO or not.
|
| Edit: I see you're comparing it to the 3.2 but I suspect
| most folks are going to be comparing your offering to the
| 4.x.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| There is a place for a cheaper 5v tolerant
| microcontroller, but that's more of a commodity space and
| probably not worth competing in for most.
| ptorrone wrote:
| it will have benefits over the 4.x - we can always spin
| up a version with the iMX chipset (we have a metro board
| with the little sister chip, iMX RT1011 already in stock)
| - tbh if we did something with the iMX RT106x we'd
| probably start with a Metro (Arduino-shield compatible)
| or Feather board since that's a super-popular pinout.
|
| either way, more hardware is better and we don't want to
| just give people the same-old-same-old... as we mentioned
| there's lots of things that we can add to make the board
| useful to people: SWD, USB C, Lipoly batt, onboard
| storage, neopixel LED, etc). what peripheral/library are
| you specifically concerned about?
| jacquesm wrote:
| If you replace the Teensy 4.x it would have to be
| something very close to the same pinout, foot print, cost
| and features otherwise it would just be a new product.
| Ideally you would find a way to source the Teensy
| directly bypassing Sparkfun.
| ptorrone wrote:
| sparkfun is the single source supplier (and now maker of
| the product).
| 15155 wrote:
| Spinning an IMXRT1062/IMXRT1064 design sans the terrible
| Teensy bootloader should take a day or two at most.
|
| These chips have perfectly-fine ROM USB bootloaders and
| SWD, don't ruin them by adding extra garbage.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, obviously, but they don't make the chips, so can't
| you just source the exact same chip, make thing pin
| compatible and call it a day? Then you'd have a drop in
| replacement, any changes you make will cause disruption
| for people downstream.
|
| https://www.nxp.com/part/MIMXRT1062DVL6A
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Mostly I'm just leery of software defined peripherals
| being at the mercy of whatever community springs up
| around them, nothing specific. In terms of a Metro then
| yeah, something to slot in where the Due was absolutely
| with high speed USB, 10/100 ethernet, CAN FD, and all
| that jazz that wouldn't work on a $10 board. A SAMV70
| successor to the Due?
|
| NXP just seems antithetical to an open platform. Then
| again Arduino went with Renesas, and they're... not
| great.
|
| Otherwise it's the openness that would pique my interest.
| SWD headers, yes 100%. But also the documentation. No
| half-assed SVDs, buggy closed source flash algorithms
| (Microchip), wholly undocumented peripherals (looking at
| you Renesas), stuff like that.
| jacquesm wrote:
| All chip manufacturers are alike in this respect,
| unfortunately. That whole industry believes that they
| thrive on secrecy and that simply properly speccing their
| hardware would already be a massive competitive risk.
| alibarber wrote:
| Yeah - I don't really consider this comparable for my
| uses which rely heavily on the DSP and processing power
| of the Teensy itself either.
|
| Drama and whatnot aside I'm not really sure why anyone
| would buy the (considerably more expensive) Teensy over
| something RP based if RP was suitable for their needs
| already.
|
| Interestingly despite being a Teensy fan I have found
| myself reaching more towards the RP when I can because I
| can't stand the Arduino API and much prefer the RP SDK. I
| do use Teensy without Teensyduino (Makefile based) and
| also a bit of the CMSIS-DSP stuff directly - but it's
| kinda clunky IMO.
| ahepp wrote:
| I've been interested to hear more about use cases for
| these "hybrid" MCUs, can you share a bit about why you
| chose that over something like a Cortex-A running linux,
| or an SoC with -A and -M cores?
| alibarber wrote:
| It's a good question - unfortunately I don't really have
| a good answer...
|
| Almost all of my embedded activities are for a my own
| hobby purposes, and I just like the ability to go 'as low
| as I can' with projects on MCUs. It's nice to be able to
| use the device's peripherals as much as possible
| (hardware DSP etc) and I'm not confident in how I'd do
| that on a Linux based system. I'm in to building my own
| ham radio Software Defined receivers and it's nice to
| keep it completely real time.
|
| If I were to be doing this stuff professionally (and I am
| very close to people who do at work) then yeah I'd
| probably be using Zephyr or something.
| ahepp wrote:
| Ah interesting! I work on (very expensive) SDRs and we
| make pretty heavy use of Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale SoCs.
| They combine Cortex-A, Cortex-R, and FPGA fabric all in
| one package, with some fancy interconnects. So you can
| handle the hard realtime stuff on an RTOS or in the FPGA,
| then send the data over to the application processor with
| a hard float ALU to crunch some numbers (or build some
| kind of dsp IP into the FPGA, idk much about that side of
| it).
|
| I've also seen some cool stuff with the BeagleBone
| products, which have a few TI custom architecture DSPs
| and "realtime units" which you can communicate with via
| Linux.
|
| But yeah, I can certainly see how just doing it all on a
| super fast MCU could be easier and cheaper without the
| backing of commercial enterprises.
|
| I've always thought it would be cool to design a "poor
| man's zynq" hat for a SBC. Stick a RP3050 and a Lattice
| FPGA on there and set up some SPI / UART connections.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| Thanks for the answer. I know many are scared off by the
| closed bootloader of the teensy (though I feel it's a fair
| thing to do). The lack of on-chip debugging is another
| shortcoming the Teensys have.
|
| I've been working on an audio project recently, and the the
| ease of use and feature set that TeensyAudio has is
| incredible.
|
| Teensy 4 does currently fill a pretty unique niche in terms
| of processing power though. There isn't much like it
| outside of professional eval boards.
| Xenograph wrote:
| > I know many are scared off by the closed bootloader of
| the teensy (though I feel it's a fair thing to do).
|
| Why is it a fair thing to do?
| alnwlsn wrote:
| It supports the developer by preventing blatant ripoffs
| of the Teensy.
|
| Paul is one guy, and has put in a ton of effort writing
| high quality libraries for it. Most or all of them are
| open source. The main MCU is a commodity item. Only the
| bootloader chip is closed source.
|
| If you want to rip off the Teensy, you can use the same
| MCU but you'll need to come up with your own bootloading
| process (Adafruit could do this if they wanted to). It
| wouldn't be that difficult but is enough of a barrier to
| stop casual cloning. Seeing as how Amazon and Aliexpress
| are filled with cheap Arduino clones but not Teensys, it
| seems to have gone well so far. Nobody wants to be
| undercut so easily by someone who has no intention of
| contributing back.
| vablings wrote:
| I think this is a bit tone-deaf the reason why the teensy
| is so desirable is because of its raw power in such a neat
| package. The RP2350 is great but if I wanted that I would
| just purchase it rather than the Freensy
| ajross wrote:
| > hardware support, like 600Mhz clock, CAN, FPU, RTC, other
| hardware peripherals which the RP2350 lacks
|
| FWIW, those are all NXP-provided features on the chip, not
| something Sparkfun has any particular connection with. There
| are other iMX devices on the market, just not in this form
| factor. And there are other vendors with SoCs offering
| similar performance.
|
| Really one of the biggest problems in this market is that
| everyone is putting the abstractions in the wrong place.
| We've all collectively decided that this stuff is scary and
| we need comforting IDEs and hardware uniformity to deal with
| it.
|
| But... portable software and frameworks are hardly new ideas.
| Come over to Zephyr and see all the stuff you can run on
| boards from basically everyone, including NXP.
|
| There's a lot more great hardware for your project than just
| Teensy, so stop locking yourself in.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| I thought the Teensys were made by PJRC. and they seem to list
| a number of US distributors on their website still. (including
| adafruit)
| aobdev wrote:
| I understand selling the Teensy line is out of your control,
| but what does "support" mean exactly in this context? Will
| related materials stay on your site?
|
| I really hope this doesn't lead to "boycott" of Teensy per se.
| I completely sympathize with tensions running high but please
| reconsider for the good of the community.
| bityard wrote:
| Documentation yes, but also Adafruit has very active support
| forums where customers can ask questions which get answered
| either by the community, or Adafruit employees, or both.
| aobdev wrote:
| If that's what they're referring to, then my question is
| why does that need to end?
| bityard wrote:
| Sorry, I misunderstood Adafruit's position and therefore
| your question. It's weird that they would stop supporting
| anything they sold, even if they now want nothing to do
| with it. (They still have five forums for x0xb0x for
| pete's sake.) I guess they are trying to make a clean
| break and want to pour all resources into Freensy.
| vultour wrote:
| I'm not sure I can trust someone who seems completely oblivious
| to capital letters.
| axus wrote:
| Links to "hate sites, photoshopped images, and harassment"?
| adolph wrote:
| What are the impacts if any to the Stemma QT and Quiic
| ecosystems?
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I am a lifelong Sparkfun and Adafruit customer, I grew up and
| went to engineering school just down the street from Sparkfun.
|
| This event will cause me to no longer be a Sparkfun customer.
|
| There is no one that I have more respect for in this world than
| limor. She has done more for this industry, education and open
| source than anyone alive.
| xyzzyxy wrote:
| Hi phil, appreciate the supposed candor here. I'm just an
| uninvolved HN observer interested in piecing together all the
| details of this dispute, here are some follow-up questions:
|
| - The first public claim is that you engaged in targeted
| social-media harassment of an individual ('discatte') [1],
| linking various personally-identifiable information to their
| public profile without consent (name, email and gmail profile
| pic), and further intentionally misgendering/dead-naming them
| after being made aware that this was harmful. Do you have any
| sort of public response to these claims, denying or apologizing
| for this behavior?
|
| - The second public claim is that the email report you sent to
| Sparkfun [2] was not simply a 'report' of harassing actions,
| but itself crossed the line into further harassing behavior
| ('hi jerks', 'you monsters', etc). Did you really, as claimed,
| copy the former employee's fiancee's current employer in these
| email threads as well? Any other context on why this unrelated
| employer needed to be brought into your dispute?
|
| - Not only SparkFun, but it appears you were also banned from
| Fossoton [3] for CoC violations related to the dispute with
| discatte, correct? Any other context on this ban?
|
| - It appears that you also sent another user harassing messages
| to their Etsy account [4] after objecting to your 'doxxing' of
| discatte's personal information and blocking you elsewhere, and
| they reported to you Etsy's trust and safety team. Any other
| context on this separate incident of alleged harassment?
|
| [1] https://digipres.club/@discatte/115600253924804026
|
| [2]
| https://gist.github.com/NPoole/df0ec196ac1db7e6eecfd2496b9b4...
|
| [3]
| https://gist.github.com/NPoole/8e128edb6e32986755450da9285b5...
|
| [4] https://chaos.social/@gsuberland/115599931317645220
| ptorrone wrote:
| user: xyzzyxy created: 2 hours ago ... ok, so you created it
| for this...
|
| the individual you reference had already been removed from
| multiple retro and maker communities prior to this dispute
| for documented behavior. i contacted them privately using an
| email address they themselves used on the site they used,
| specifically to ask for a stop to the pile-on and to see
| whether there was a constructive way to resolve their
| grievance. their email included their first name, which i
| used in direct reply. there was no campaign, no public
| exposure of private information, and no intent to harm.
| labeling that interaction as "doxxing" is a distortion that
| collapses any private contact into wrongdoing.
|
| with respect to sparkfun, yes, i sent a direct email to the
| founder, and ceo (and contacts i have there) calling out what
| i believe is a long-standing bully culture tolerated at the
| top. calling a company out for behavior is not harassment,
| even when the language is blunt. during this same period,
| fake accounts using my handle appeared and mass-reporting was
| clearly underway. my real account was likely caught up in
| that. retroactively attributing moderation actions for saying
| their first name on their email is inaccurate.
|
| the various bans you cite did not occur after some calm,
| independent review of facts. they occurred in the middle of
| coordinated reporting, they said so.
|
| as for etsy, i asked a seller who was publicly accusing me of
| "doxxing" a question: would placing an order would expose my
| personal information? that was it, there was a sticker in my
| cart already, i know this maker's work. etsy declined to take
| action that i know of, i just an etsy order, no ban (i did
| not buy the stickers). recharacterizing that as harassment is
| another example of inflation through repetition.
|
| what your summary consistently excludes is the long,
| documented history of nate's behavior and the impact it has
| had on employees, collaborators, and partners over many
| years. i dealt with that for a decade. i am not doing that
| anymore. drawing a line cost us purchasing a closed source
| board that only sparkfun makes, so we're doing an open source
| version.
| xyzzyxy wrote:
| > user: xyzzyxy created: 2 hours ago ... ok, so you created
| it for this...
|
| Yes, indeed, given the claims of targeted harassment of
| random participants this thread is dealing with, I
| preferred to avoid being personally targeted next just for
| being another random participant. Others will have to trust
| that I'm not previously involved, just a HN observer trying
| to make sense of the details of this dispute now that it
| spilled over here.
|
| > their email included their first name, which i used in
| direct reply. there was no campaign, no public exposure of
| private information, and no intent to harm. labeling that
| interaction as "doxxing" is a distortion that collapses any
| private contact into wrongdoing.
|
| Maybe I missed something, but this wasn't a simple reply to
| a private email as you seem to imply- it was a public
| social media post linking their name to their account
| (which they had specifically avoided for privacy purposes),
| not edited/removed after it was made clear that the
| exposure of that information was harmful to them, and the
| misgendering/dead-naming was repeated in subsequent
| communications after it was made clear that this behavior
| was unwanted. Is any of that inaccurate?
|
| > what your summary consistently excludes is the long,
| documented history of nate's behavior and the impact it has
| had on employees, collaborators, and partners over many
| years. i dealt with that for a decade.
|
| Not having been involved at all, I know nothing about the
| 'long, documented history' of grievances between you all,
| but if there are missing details that would help further
| clarify what the dispute here is _really_ about, feel free
| to go beyond a 'vague public accusation' and share them
| directly.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _the individual you reference had already been removed
| from multiple retro and maker communities prior to this
| dispute for documented behavior._
|
| Their response when you made this claim in November was
| "what communities?????". Are you perhaps mixing them up
| with someone else? (Source:
| https://digipres.club/@discatte/115595517911363679 - I'm
| also uninvolved.)
| doktor2un wrote:
| Post the emails
| iterance wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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-manufac...
| torginus wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| mosura wrote:
| Olimex are a better middle ground than sparkfun or adafruit
| for the things they cover.
|
| In truth people will spend a lot of money paying other people
| to shop on Aliexpress for them so they can maintain the
| illusion they are above all that.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Personally, I've had absolutely miserable experiences
| trying to get products on Aliexpress.
|
| I have at least 3 paid for orders that literally just
| _never_ showed up (18650 charger, and two LFP 24v
| chargers). It 's not a huge sum of money (~$45) but it's
| just... gone. Poof - into the ether. It's been more than 24
| months.
|
| I also have had orders take 3+ months to actually arrive.
| Consistently. And some products that do show up but are
| absolutely unfit for purpose (ex - copper wire that IS NOT
| COPPER).
|
| Given the complete lack of reliability... I now avoid
| aliexpress for pretty much everything.
|
| So sure - something like sparkfun/adafruit/etc is going to
| charge me an overhead, but that overhead ensures
|
| 1. The product will roughly work
|
| 2. The product will show up
|
| 3. The product will show up on a reasonable timeline
|
| ----
|
| The extra money isn't so I can have an illusion that I'm
| "above all that"... it's literally just setting a baseline
| service level that I don't mind paying extra for, because
| aliexpress isn't a reliable shop (and is borderline scammy
| as fuck).
| MallocVoidstar wrote:
| Adafruit dev boards are way more expensive than Chinese
| alternatives but I've never used an Adafruit board where I
| went "why in the world did they do _X_ ", where X is some
| design choice (except having a bright LED light up while the
| board had power). On the other hand I've had Chinese boards
| that have a battery jack but an always-powered component on
| the board uses like 10+mA at all times when alternative
| choices for the same component use literally
| hundreds/thousands of times less power (but cost 1 cent
| more).
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| Both Adafruit and Sparkfun manufacturing quality is higher
| than generic manufacturing from China. I suspect that most of
| the Chinese alternatives meet their price point by using
| parts that are out of spec and were purchased at a discount
| by the chip manufacturer (or just scrounged for free from the
| reject pile).
|
| My primary example is this clock generator breakout:
| https://www.adafruit.com/product/2045
|
| The board is open source and there are tons of options made
| in China, often on a purple PCB. I've had terrible
| experiences with them, over 50% of the purple boardss I've
| purchased fail to achieve PLL lock because of multiple
| reasons- sometimes replacing the crystal can get it locked,
| but sometimes the chip is just out of spec and can't get a
| lock. Occasionally I'll get a lock on one PLL and the board
| is partly useable. I've given up dealing with the hassle and
| now I just spend the extra few dollars to get a breakout that
| uses parts sourced from authorized distributors that meet
| quality control standards. Plus this gives the profits to the
| people who designed the board and released it as open
| hardware.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Product support, documentation, comparability, and community
| support/forums
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| Wait, does this mean that all adafruit items for sale on
| sparkfun.com are going to be on a clearance sale?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Looks to me like they'll just dispose of the stock and not sell
| it.
| burnte wrote:
| "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-
| teens...
| HWR_14 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "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-
| teens...
| crumpled wrote:
| The question was about Adafruit products on Sparkfun. This
| answer is about Teensies on Adafruit.
| burnte wrote:
| "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-teens...
| adolph wrote:
| > We have put the remaining stock on sale.
|
| Looks like the prices of Teensy boards on adafruit.com are
| the same as before. Maybe the statement means they will
| continue to sell them instead of "on sale" in the sense of
| applying a discount.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| That's the opposite, but also cool.
| stego-tech wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Are you one of those pro-skub hooligans?
|
| https://pbfcomics.com/comics/skub/
| stego-tech wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I miss the days when we would get Ruby Drama like this every
| week.
| Perz1val wrote:
| Those guys migrated to Rust and are too busy pleasing the
| borrow checker now
| deepriverfish wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Meh wish it was that simple, this paints at least part of their
| leadership as completely unhinged:
| https://chaos.social/@North/115605819126197877
|
| We're only probably seeing part of the whole mess though.
| Dangeranger wrote:
| 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-...
| bob001 wrote:
| For more context: There's also social media posts accusing
| ptorrone of engaging in harassment campaigns against other
| people.
| xyzzyxy wrote:
| 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
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Right, then why are you publicizing / dramatizing your own
| disgust?
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| tu quo que
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| I'm not condemning public drama. I support public drama.
| I'm questioning you, specifically.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| ok
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| Are you going to answer the question?
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| no
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| then please don't start drama yourself, thank you :)
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| 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.
| vegadw wrote:
| I'm still trying to put all the pieces together, but
| 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.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| 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.
| chinathrow wrote:
| Reading this, it looks like everyone needs a break.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| This adds some more context I guess
| https://chaos.social/@North/115605819126197877
|
| Honestly the whole thing seems like everyone overreacting on
| both sides. Accusing someone is "doxing" because they used your
| first name?
| buildbot wrote:
| I believe they are claiming doxing based on connecting an
| email to a social media account.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| Isn't that a built in feature of most social media
| platforms?
| buildbot wrote:
| Consensually, typically.
| relaxing wrote:
| Buried in there is the Sparkfun guy did in fact register a
| vanity domain and stand up a site for the purpose of
| harassing the Adafruit guy.
|
| Kind of shitty to play the victim at that point.
| ptorrone wrote:
| correct "the Sparkfun guy did in fact register a vanity
| domain and stand up a site for the purpose of harassing"
| Semaphor wrote:
| From the screenshots posted, you seem to be doing
| significantly more harassing. Or are those all fake?
| lisdexan wrote:
| Is it? It was (as far we know) a mild shitpost of a public
| figure like from a decade ago. Photoshopping someones head
| over the Pepe Silva meme is not nice, but its hardly
| harassment. To me the "worst" thing was registering the
| domain, which he gave to Torrone and apologized quite well
| in my opinion https://gist.github.com/NPoole/d9aab9dfa2a18f
| 4141039f7ce3505....
|
| Sure, if this was a pattern of behavior it would be
| ridiculous to play the victim, but there isn't as far we
| know. 9 years later, Torrone starts Mullenweg-posting
| because some random criticized him for AI stuff. He posts
| their private email taken from a receipt and when blocked
| he continues with sock-puppets. Sparkfun guy gives a (quite
| measured) opinion colored by the fact that Torrone is still
| is doing this shit to random people. Torreone acusses the
| Sparkfun guy of being his personal Moriarty.
|
| The most unhinged (and cowardly) thing to me is bringing up
| his partner and his newborn at every turn in his Twitter
| shitflinging, when any "slights" just seem only directed at
| him.
|
| (Dude, if you are reading this just log off, this might
| literally just sleep deprivation. Take focus on caring of
| your child instead of fighting on the internet)
| rincebrain wrote:
| I don't have a bone in this race, but if someone has
| deliberately hidden their identity online, knowingly
| disclosing that is malicious, regardless of any other
| morality involved.
|
| Consider people who have their public persona very
| deliberately obfuscated, like Banksy, or Chuck Tingle - it's
| very intentional that both of them do not disclose that, and
| if you found out either of their legal names, and disclosed
| it publicly, it would be with deliberate intent to subvert
| them.
|
| Or consider if someone posted online they had a beer, and
| they lived somewhere that considered that an egregious crime
| even if they did it somewhere that it was legal. If you
| deliberately released proof that the person posting "I had a
| beer" was this person, it would have malicious intent,
| regardless of how you feel about the morality of beer.
| suobset wrote:
| The collections of threads, statements, and accusations on
| both sides are some of the most unhinged things I have seen
| in a while, and I don't think any of this helps anyone. :')
| ddtaylor wrote:
| That looks like the usual social media victim style posting.
| seu wrote:
| People seem to throw the words "doxxing" and "harassing" very
| lightly these days, if you ask me, although I'll give that
| nobody in this whole mess seems to be capable of calm or even
| non-violent communication.
| cobalt60 wrote:
| Nice take on creating a thread about freensy on SparkFun's own
| forum!
|
| https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-...
| oytis wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Ok, ok, I exaggerated. But still, communuty is small, and the
| industry is big, and drama seems to be handled very
| differently in both
| ddtaylor wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Dig under all of this garbage and all you'll find is a few
| employees mad about their gender or something. What a waste of
| everyones time involved.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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/df0ec196ac1db7e6eecfd2496b9b4...
| hamburglar wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| hamburglar wrote:
| Obviously I don't claim to speak for everyone else when I
| say it only seems that way to him. I'm being tongue in
| cheek. But I do think it's the wrong instinct and the
| fact that some people agree isn't reason to give into it.
| account42 wrote:
| Are these all teenagers?
| ahepp wrote:
| 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.
| skilning wrote:
| Can't help but read that and think, "And Nick thinks this
| email chain makes HIM look like the reasonable person?"
| squigz wrote:
| What am I missing about Nick's behavior that is
| unreasonable?
| drakythe wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| qq66 wrote:
| 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?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yet another open source drama fest. Can't be bothered. I'll buy
| the best product at cheapest. I can use two stores.
| verytrivial wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| [2]: https://chaos.social/@gsuberland/115599931317645220
| ptorrone wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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
| lsaferite wrote:
| > However, as I understand it, you instead tracked down the
| Etsy store of someone who had criticized and blocked you on
| social media, specifically to send them further unwanted
| messages related to your previous conversation about
| "doxxing" another user.
|
| I have zero knowledge of the drama beyond reading the posts
| here, but if this is true then that clearly falls into the
| harassment arena.
| rlt wrote:
| 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.
| disqard wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| MarcoDotIO wrote:
| 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.
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