Hope common sense prevails and Adafruit can go back to doing what it does best instead of dealing with this (IMO) distraction.
Adafruit works tirelessly to build trust with the community. So, if they’re fighting something I just assume they’re doing it for our benefit.
Before issuing any public response, and before involving the press - Limor wrote directly to Flux’s founder, Matthias Wagner. Not through lawyers. Founder to founder.
She proposed: a podcast of his choosing, open questions and answers, with the community watching and taking part. She offered to keep Phil off the podcast.
Her words:
“Before we both spend lots of time and money embroiled in a legal dispute, I would like to explore with you a way to reconcile things and perhaps turn this into a positive… adults with good intentions can work together and solve them… Cooler heads can prevail and we could set a good example for the community, building a future together where everyone can make and share electronics.”
She followed up the next day, again.
That offer stands. We would still rather build than litigate, and we would still rather talk in the open. We think that is how this should work - between two companies who both believe anyone with a browser should be able to make electronics, we can set a good example together.
We will update the community, and will still look forward to sharing our story.
- ladyada & pt
When we decided to go fully open source hardware at AirGradient, I looked at the ‘business’ models of two companies: Adafruit and Arduino.
Seeing that both worked sustainably, made our decision much easier and it was probably one of the best decisions of our life. I just talked at the Open Hardware summit in Berlin about “50 devices later: The open source hardware advantage” [1].
If not, why not?
My concern here is that this is like a child going to their parents to complain their sibling hit them, only to find out when you ask the sibling that the first one pushed them off their bicycle.
If you don't share it, I think it's a reasonable assumption that you're coming in with unclean hands, trying to use the court of opinion to gain sympathy while denying us the full picture.
Unilaterally publishing Flux's demand letter probably isn't prohibited but doing so prior to discussion or any notice IS a signal. And it's a signal that could be interpreted by Flux as non-constructive, escalation or possibly even combative. In the absence of clear communication, things can be interpreted incorrectly.
I've been in far too many of these potentially contentious, early-lawyer-letter loops over the decades. It's actually shocking how easily things can spiral into unintended escalation over essentially nothing, especially very early on. And the more things start amping up, even if only in one party's imagination, it's absurd how hard to can be to climb back down. Especially with lawyers in the loop who are incentivized to fully preserve all their client's rights, posture aggressively for tactical position and burn retainer 12 minutes at a time.
I finally started to "get it" after maybe the third time in three years where I discovered after several months, $15,000 and a bunch of stress that the whole stupid thing could have been sorted in the first week by acting slowly, dismissing my assumptions and resisting all my instincts about how to respond. Let's just give these folks a week to see if there's a way to hit CTRL+Z, before we start demanding details just so we can pass meaningless mob judgement on who's right or wrong.
> we have temporarily stopped publishing on the Adafruit blog
That they needed to explain to their audience why they stopped publishing on their blog, and I inferred they might have previously mentioned on social media that an article was in the works, as many blogs do (which might also explain the demand letter). But I don't know for sure, and apparently neither do you.
The only difference is I didn't demand any documents, post uninformed speculation or "reasonably assume" lack of compliance with my demands would be "unclean hands" and "passive aggressive" behavior. I clearly need to work harder at being a more engaged uninformed bystander. I haven't even slung any accusations or roused any rabble yet.
> The only difference is I didn't demand any documents, post uninformed speculation or "reasonably assume" lack of compliance with my demands would be "unclean hands" and "passive aggressive" behavior. I clearly need to work harder at being a more engaged uninformed bystander. I haven't even slung any accusations or roused any rabble yet.
Speaking of passive-aggressive...sheesh.