SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation • Hacker News Board

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#491

Post by hettygreen » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 7:45 AM UTC

ptorrone wrote: post #21

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…

Hi Phil, sorry to hear that something went down and involved Limor... that's not cool. A few Q's:

1. Will the freenzy be a 100% drop-in replacement for the teensy?

2. Will the freenzy be able to be programmed using teensyduino?

3. PJRC's bootloader is closed-source (I know, I've built 1000 Teensy-LC's after the product's discontinuation). Does that mean you're sourcing bootloaders from PJRC or reverse engineering the bootloader chip?

Opinion 1: If I can't take code written for a Teensy and upload it straight to the Freenzy, then this is not "Teensy Compatible". Likewise if the pinout is not the same, including all of the rear pcb-pads.

Opinion 2: If this is not actually Teensy Compatible, but just "Teensy Inspired", what about branding this as adafruit's own microcontroller and not cut into Paul and Robin's income by selling a totally different product that rides on their name recognition and decade of work?

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#492

Post by rpcope1 » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 7:50 AM UTC

ramblurr wrote: post #2

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.

Maybe I'm missing something, but the big players that I know ship and sell globally like Digikey, Newark and Arrow are all Adafruit distributors, and presumably that wouldn't change. Do you mean brick and mortar or something else?

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#493

Post by LoganDark » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 8:10 AM UTC

ptorrone wrote: post #417

kuttel2 wrote: post #412

[flagged]

disagree, and we are not autistic.

your writing style in particular fits with a lot of autistic people I've seen, FWIW. but I don't support using "autistic" as an insult (it's honestly the opposite, IMO)

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#494

Post by lrvick » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 8:31 AM UTC

ptorrone wrote: post #129

alnwlsn wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ar…

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…

I for one abandoned the Teensy for all projects once I realized it was closed as I have no interest in promoting or teaching closed hardware and software in my personal DIY time.

I will gladly be a customer of your open hardware replacements.

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#495

Post by RCitronsBroker » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 8:35 AM UTC

suobset wrote: post #300

RobotToaster wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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. :')

this all reads like a bunch of nerds with difficulties assessing on where to draw the line. Is it really that hard to figure out that neither registering a domain to meme a person, nor going on a spazz-posting spree and messaging folks over etsy DMs is considered normal, adjusted behavior??

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#496

Post by lrvick » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 8:47 AM UTC

alnwlsn wrote: post #337

Xenograph wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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…

Supporting free and open source technology means supporting whoever can get it in as many hands as possible as cheaply as possible while paying your employees fairly. Adafruit gets this.

Making anything proprietary at this point for use in DIY software or hardware projects just makes me roll my eyes and hold my money for the day the open clones come. I have been saddened by dead open hardware projects because old versions of Teensy they were built around are no longer produced.

I will never buy a Teensy, but I look forward to buying the Freensy.

Sparkfun blew it by making the Teensy partially closed and so Teensy will be irrelevant. LibreOffice, OpenTofu, MariaDB etc. The most open solution always wins in the end. It is why I buy Prusa over Bambu, and why I pick Adafruit over Sparkfun.

My own companies likewise freely OSI license everything we do to the public no matter what the profit minded folks in our universe have to say. I -love- when people compete with us using our own work. If you can make a budget version of what we invent for people that cannot afford a bit extra to support us, wonderful. That is success for us as a creators that want to maximize impact.

If you cannot afford our prices, by all means buy from a competitor and contribute to the ecosystem that our customers benefit from anyway. That is why we will never spend a second of our engineering time creating or promoting proprietary technology because all the skills we have are because others shared their work with us.

I honestly take a lot of inspiration from companies like Adafruit as a leader of my own orgs.

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#497

Post by dryark » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 8:50 AM UTC

I find this political mess to be interesting, but I'm not sure it's an appropriate topic of conversation for the "professional community."

It looks to me like people on both sides were bothering the other over and extended period of time and it got worse till it led to this.

Having seen similar over my career I don't understand what digging into this accomplishes besides making all sides more upset.

I do think it is wrong for the professional relationship ( continuing to sell technology ) to be ended over a personal dispute.

From where I stand it looks like Phil is attempting to defend himself by being open about what happened even though the whole situation seems unpleasant.

Besides that I think it is likely best if all sides in this just cease communicating or saying anything more and move on from the personal stuff.

My two cents.

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#498

Post by asddubs » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 8:53 AM UTC

xyzzyxy wrote: post #338

ptorrone wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 unwant…

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

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#499

Post by asddubs » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 8:56 AM UTC

hamburglar wrote: post #206

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 * sparkfu…

Here's the ex-employees side of the story, complete with receipts (taken from another post on this story):

https://chaos.social/@North/115602127173454774

IMO what they did is pretty overblown. They did register a joke domain but basically folded and apologized immediately. Then nothing for 8 years, until they commented on a post where adafruit was accused of doxxing on mastodon.

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#500

Post by oytis » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 9:01 AM UTC

15155 wrote: post #425

oytis wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, that probably depends on how extreme are the views? If you write a blog post about there being too many colored people in London, how are non-white developers supposed to collaborate with you?

Perhaps by minding your own business and focusing on the work? Nobody is forcing you to view that person's blog or to even know it exists. If that individual's viewpoints somehow visibly leak into their work or professional communications, then you might have a case for complaint or concern.

That's demanding too much from minorities IMO. OK, you should tolerate a racist colleague, what about a racist boss? Like, you know he'd like to see fewer people like you, and also gets to decide about your promotion or layoff.