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Comment by RobotToaster | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

What would you have them publish instead? Your curiosity does not overcome the right to privacy of those involved.

> 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.

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.

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

that's not the point as far as I can tell. The parent was saying the remarks were oversharing, not false.

> No harm in that if it's true.

Same as saying "Behringer is a convicted paedophile": no harm if it's true, right?

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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

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

Nothing. They could just cut ties and be done with it.

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.

> What would you have them publish instead?

How about nothing and continue to resolve the matter privately? If you intentionally leave out important details and context then you're just manipulating public sentiment to gain leverage on the other guy.

It seems like releasing more would have probably broken the exact same rules they are claiming AdaFruit broke.

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".

> 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.

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.

"they could open themselves up to a libel lawsuit."

They already have.

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)

Libel is a type of defamation. Just to be pedantic.

pedantic is the best kind of pedantry.

In my opinion, you either publish everything and every detail or simply publish nothing.

Here is the tl;dr: My business partner sucks and is a bad person. I am not going to say what he did but he sucks. I am cutting him off.

Don’t attention whore on the internet if you want privacy.

Yes. They really should have just put a notice up that they're no longer distributing AdaFruit products and direct people to Adafruit website.

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