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SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

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581–590 of 591 posts

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

the person said we are "autistic new york jews"

yeah I don't think that's accurate at all (or coherent?)

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#582
post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Often these "rules" extend to conduct far outside of the purview of a project - typically crossing into identity politics. So rules you don't agree with?

What is purview, and why should a software project be allowed to police all aspects of life and communication because "them's the rules and rules is rules!"

In the same way that any other organisation has rules, which they agree amongst themselves.

The joy of a free (as in not being arrested) society is that if you don't like those rules you are free not to join. Or free to moan about them repeatedly until everyone dogpiles on them to change the rules, or not.

Either way, they are allowed to make rules how they like. Just as you are allowed to not like those rules, and talk about it incessantly.

As I said, CoCs are just rules, some of which _you_ don't like

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

without Sparkfun, whose catalog could they have scraped? Without Sparkfun developing the business model for them to copy, where would they be?

You mean the radio shack business model? The Heathkit business model? The Eico business model? Jameco? Digikey?

you wouldn't know of them if they had emulated any of those.

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-sourc…

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Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-sourc…

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Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 y…

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" ...

Having read the whole thing in great detail, I’m going to try to give you an honest perspective. Your competitor has done nothing to you. Someone loosely connected to your competitor (used to work there) did something extremely mild to you, and you have been overreacting to it so egregiously that it splashed over into your relationship with another company, through no fault of theirs. It is now to the point that you have made a complete ass of yourself. If you had simply let it drop like an adult, Nick never would have dropped that incredibly damning (to you) email chain. You blew it.

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#587
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I would argue that laws are “bad” if there’s no way to get a proper hearing when you’re accused of violating them. Laws should constrain both sides of the law (the person subject to them and the person enforcing them) otherwise they’re just arbitrary rules by the person with more power. And while that’s a perfectly valid way to run something, it’s dishonest to dress “arbitrary personal decisions” up in the trappings of law. And realistically that applies to all the things you listed, COC, NDA, TOS etc.

But if someone can just drag out a law and vaguely accuse someone else of violating that law and then enforce a punishment with no way for the accused to get a hearing or present their case and have a real chance to prevail, then yes I would say the law is bad.

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#588
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just ask for a refund if it doesn't show up or is crap. Not hard.

Even if you do manage to get a refund, it obviously sucks to be in that position where you need one

You usually get stuff for 1/10 to 1/3 the cost. The counter is sometimes you have to do a refund. If you have more money than time, then don't buy from them.

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#589

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…

a follow up, sparkfun seems to still be doing business with while not doing business, "This message is to formally confirm that SparkFun Electronics intends to issue applicable royalty payment for Q4 2025 no later than January 31, 2026, in accordance with previously established timelines." i get it, they want to keep selling those products. this was probably about money and margins.

> a follow up, sparkfun seems to still be doing business with while not doing business,

The linked website indicates this decision was made on or around Jan 7. Your own liked page is dated for the 12. Unless you’re asserting that the decision was made and effective before Q4 2025, this sounds like them putting in writing that they intend to follow through on preexisting contractual obligations for prior sales. Not really “doing business with while not doing business” IMO.

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#590
post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not everyone who works at adafruit works in our industry city, brooklyn factory. we've been doing remote before it was a thing, you can check out our shows or ask before assuming the worst, but whatevers, you made up your mind and want us to move to florida.

I would love to use Adafruit boards in my production, but I have to resort to custom Chinese PCB stuff to be competitive. I don't want anything, but taxes and CoL is basic business logic. SparkFun is in Colorado, which isn't a low tax state but their cost of living is still lower. So all else equals, they are going to earn maybe 5-10% more profit on the sale of a commodity item like a Teensy. You have better products…

>simply moving to greener pastures, whether that be NC, TN, NV, or FL

Yeah, but then they’d be in NC, TN, NV, or FL which, frankly, sounds absolutely miserable. They made the right choice by being in NYC.

Adafruit seems to be doing very well where they are. Why would they want to suffer in such junk states like those with worthless governments when they could continue to be where they are and are happy? They’d also be scraping the bottom of the barrel in those places for talent for the necessary in-person positions. The stars up mentioned sure are cheaper, and they still cost more than they are worth.

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