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Comment by 827a | Hacker News Reader

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."

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> 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.

Thanks for the message. Which IRC channel should I join?

Both companies are pretty small and presumably exist because their owners are passionate about hobby electronics. Honestly, I'd rather have companies like that ran by (flawed) humans than by PR robots.

If they want to air their dirty laundry in public, I'm happy to grab popcorn and watch. I'm honestly shocked by the number of folks on this thread who don't know the specifics, and most probably never even bought anything from Sparkfun or Adafruit, but still want to condemn one of the companies in the strongest possible terms...

>To be honest, neither side looks good in this one. Both companies have behaved disappointingly at different times for different reasons.

ESH?

It would be nice if people came out and explained exactly what the harassment, COC violations, etc were so we could make accurate judgements ourselves about all of this. And no, posting literally what happened or what was sent or said will not get you in trouble for libel unless you don't have proof of it happening.

This dancing around what was actually said or sent all reminds me of that meme, Dipshit289: dude you don't wanna know... Oh the horror...

Fwiw, there's this thread that seemingly explains what employee was doing the harassment - and shows Phil overreacting and exaggerating the 'harassment' itself, as well as misattributing blame: https://chaos.social/@North/115605819126197877

That makes me think much less of both Adafruit and SparkFun. I really, really wish all sides would simply put everything out for us to evaluate. Having to trust various unreliable narrators is not respectful to the time of all of us potential customers.

See additional context for the accusation(s) here[0].

[0] https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-...

still vague as hell lol

I need to see the photoshops!

> 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.

The problem is once you get into concrete specifics, you enter the realm of legal liability and potential libel, so it's all posturing until their adrenaline runs out, then they'll either reconcile (or not) behind closed doors.

You know, I think you're right. I recant what I said earlier. I actually don't think I should care about this matter at all.

In a more general sense, it seems best to me that people should just mind their own business and settle things like adults without giving into this pervasive and strange desire to be vindicated by their framing of the situation to others.

There is literally no benefit to anyone but the storyteller. They are either seen as more or less virtuous by their framing of the situation.

They have an interest in telling you a story that makes them look good and a greater interest in downplaying their guilt in the matter. At the end of the day it means very little to most observers.

Pair that with the absolute disincentive to provide actual specifics, the whole thing is moot to an honest person.

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.

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.

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.

after a decade of dealing with the founder's bullying, i had enough, looking back almost every year there was something. we did handle things privately until it was clear nothing was going to change, the only real change is we cannot buy teensy, a closed source board sparkfun exclusively makes now, maybe they (sparkfun) will stop paying the payments on something that had to agreed to, and have, we'll see.

I understand you're pretty upset with the situation, and I can't blame you.

But I never should be reading about any of this on public forums. It doesn't reflect well on you or Adafruit.

Now an outcome has been chosen for you, without your input. The situation is probably irreconcilable.

That's not the position you ever want to be in. Obviously.

If the situation was untenable, after your reasonable and private attempts, you should have decided to sever ties on your terms. The outcome would have been the same, but you'd be in control of the situation, and wouldn't be permanently leaving things in public view.

I'm sorry for the situation. I'm a real hot head at times, but it's something I've learned (the hard way, over and over again) that I need to control. Business is business...

I hope it works out for you and Adafruit.

there was only one product we were purchasing anything in the hundreds of units, the teensy... we had a record sales today, inquires for a new board that is open source, so i think the community and customers have made decisions too.

The Teensy is so 2020 anyways. You want to skate where the puck is going.

You will want boards of the Kendryte K230 or SpacemitK3 (best value RISC-V chips) or Puya PY32 (best cheapest MCU, takes 5V!), and a STM32P1 linux board for good measure.

I completely disagree. Be yourself. And broadly, if you aspire to be in charge, as opposed to a forever IC, be yourself even more!

Adafruit makes an aesthetic experience that appeals to a niche audience. It is not an hockey stick growth company. And even those that are: Everybody makes aesthetic experiences. Nobody needs hobbyist microcontrollers.

Part of the product is being on the “right side” of Internet dramas.

If part of the product is "being on the right side of Internet drama", that kinda makes me trust them even less. A perverse incentive to get involved in stupid slapfights, escalate, and lie about it...

A private email isn't internet drama: you commenting on a disagreement you are not involved in, on the internet, is internet drama.

The person you are commenting on privately communicated, the public link you are reading is the other party.

I don't mean to be rude but given that I've seen several public statements about this "situation" from Paul dating back to Nov, I think you're commenting on a less complete dataset than I am.

You must be misunderstanding: the public post you are linking is from the party you are not talking to, and was the first publicly published thing, which if I'm reading correctly, is the sin to you.

> Now an outcome has been chosen for you, without your input. The situation is probably irreconcilable.

I think you've reversed cause and effect. SparkFun publicly cut off Adafruit in response to Adafruit's private contact with SparkFun. Only then did Adafruit put out a public post addressing SparkFun's vague public allegations.

I see: when you’re working with another company and someone’s a dick, you can’t mention it and give constructive suggestions on how to fix it, because then the suggestions are transmutated into an order. That means you are telling a company what it has to do to stop the bad thing, which is worse than the bad thing.

> it has to do to stop the bad thing, which is worse than the bad thing

Imo that “worse than the bad thing” evaluation is highly subjective. Nevertheless, I have to say I agree with the poster who recommends you cut ties on your own terms.

They seem to have reported it in private and were then banned and publicly accused of Code of Conduct violations in retaliation. Going public with everything would seem to be the reasonable response.

Sure, but they did so by going to the Teensy forum, which is not a SparkFun site, and really made a stink. If going public is reasonable, they did it in the least reasonable way.

That’s not what I’m seeing. They requested comments from the public about the product, only mentioning that the fact that they weren’t allowed to purchase more from Sparkfun [0]. Sparkfun then jumped into the discussion with accusations of a Code of Conduct violation, and only then did they respond publicly. Sparkfun made it public first in that 3rd party forum.

[0] https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-...

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.

Joyent's CEO once said he would have sacked another companies employee.

> You don't tell or demand another company do something with their own employees.

Depends what they did. Let's check the forum post…

> 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.

Ok yeah if a company is sharing bigoted photoshops of my likeness, yes, I'm gonna demand that they discipline the responsible employees. Obviously.

I don't have any reference point for what "hate sites, photoshopped images, and harassment [meriting HR training]" constitute, but if it's anywhere near as bad as it sounds, sure, escalate the situation and air your dirty laundry in public. This is unacceptable behaviour, and apparently it went on for years. When you're being publicly harassed, you have no duty to indefinitely restrain your response to private, polite emails.

It sounds like the allegations are for things that was be illegal in nature.

I think the expected way to handle something like this would be to write the calm factual email. If that goes nowhere then sue them. I don't think the public airing approach is the right one.

Suing is way more expensive and way more hostile than simply airing your grievances in public. And why not? That's what public forums are for. "Do nothing" and "sue them" are not your only options; we are part of a society, not merely party to a legal system.

It’s difficult to prosecute online harassment, and “hate sites and photoshopped images” aren’t illegal. There’s a right to freedom of speech in the US.

Further the 'hate-' prefix in an accusation makes it one I immediately tune out.

It's just a manipulative word that lets you incite people while not actually revealing what was said.

Slander is illegal, and while not exactly the same thing, there is a lot of overlap.

Depending on the nature of the site, there also might be rules around unfair competition that might be implicated.

There is a very high bar for slander in the US, especially for public figures.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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