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SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

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Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#91

Post by roland35 »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #75
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…

What’s the deal with 5v, 3.3v and 24v “standards” for sensors? It seems like there are really three different markets and it sucks because crossing “lanes” is really annoying. I like how you all made the qwik connectors “just work”, but now that I’m trying more industrial stuff I’m having a hard time figuring out how to get my 24v world to play nicely with the 3.3v world but of course my 24v world only wants to do SP…

Those levels are based on the electronics themselves. Earlier circuits used TTL which needed higher voltages to signify a "High". Newer CMOS based electronics need less voltage.

Lower voltages help with power savings. Higher voltages can and do work better in high power, high noise environments though! 24V as you see is still very popular and useful inany applications.

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#92

Post by ptorrone »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #75
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…

What’s the deal with 5v, 3.3v and 24v “standards” for sensors? It seems like there are really three different markets and it sucks because crossing “lanes” is really annoying. I like how you all made the qwik connectors “just work”, but now that I’m trying more industrial stuff I’m having a hard time figuring out how to get my 24v world to play nicely with the 3.3v world but of course my 24v world only wants to do SP…

great question! so historically microcontrollers (and sensors) were 5V 'CMOS' power and logic. this was way better than the up-to-12V for TTL logic but over time the desire for higher clock speeds / faster IO / lower power means the voltage needs to drop (since power = current * voltage lower voltage is lower power) the next voltage standard became 3.3V. these days, even 3.3V is a 'bit high' and we're seeing lots of device that are 1.8V or 1.65V or even 1.2V max (yeek!) one thing we do for all of our sensor breakouts is add level shifting up/down as necessary so they work with EITHER 5V older boards (yay no need to throw them out!) or with the newer 3.3V boards (woo forward compatibility) level shifting and regulation also reduces the risk of damage from over/under volting or plugging stuff in backwards. this is documented here: https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-adafruit-stemma-qt/st...

maybe someone from sparkfun could post advice for you here too...

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#93

Post by jacquesm »

echelon wrote: post #3

Why publish this publicly? Now I wonder what really happened. The SparkFun folks are cool. Back when I was a broke college student, they sent me free electronics kits. I massively respect them for that. I'm surprised AdaFruit did something wrong here. They frequently blog about their stances on issues and seem to try to take the moral high ground on a lot of issues.

> I'm surprised AdaFruit did something wrong here.

You don't actually know that for a fact.

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#94

Post by Dangeranger »

For context: This post by ptorrone suggests that leadership at Sparkfun has been engaged in a long running harassment campaign against the founder of AdaFruit (Limor Fried) and is now attempting to weaponize their CoC to cast blame on the victim in order to deflect from their own behavior[0].

    for anyone still reading:
    in july, we told sparkfun they needed to get their house in order. for years, sparkfun's leadership ignored specific behavior from leadership (and employees, now former... 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. this was reported to them. it was documented and ignored. that was the big issue i wanted them to get some hr training on, or _something_

    months later in 2025, the same individual resurfaced and re-promoted it with what appears to be nate's blessing at the time. we again told sparkfun to deal with this. instead of addressing the behavior, sparkfun’s response was to “ban” adafruit from purchasing teensy by invoking a vague, secret set of rules that neither we nor paul (the creator of teensy) were allowed to see.

    this is not a one-off. nate (the founder of sparkfun) has done this before. anyone who has worked with him long enough knows this is how conflict is handled: deflect, escalate, and try to punish rather than deal with the underlying conduct.

    we do not respond to bullying by backing down. we never have. that is why we are here.
https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-...

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#95

Post by grugagag »

allreduce wrote: post #60
swed420 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't be the first time CoC was used as a lame attempt to harm open source. Thanks for speaking up.

I find it weird to jump to this from the scarce information we have. "Someone did a CoC violation" is just a way for an org to say "someone was an asshole to such an extent it was driving other people away or getting us into legal trouble", with the manner of assholery defined in the CoC. 9/10 times it is nothing sinister. Of course right now we just don't know what happened.

Are you HR or something?

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#96

Post by knorker »

phkahler wrote: post #30
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…

No questions. Just move on. Engaging in public spectacle isn't a good look for anyone.

No in this case addressing the accusation is necessary.

I think what's currently been said is sufficient. You need to make a grown up version of the statement "None of that is true", but yes probably best to leave it at that.

Honestly, this being Adafruit, my default assumption is to believe them. Especially with this super vague "please read between the lines because if I actually say something false it'll be libel" accusation.

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#97

Post by mmmlinux »

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…

I thought the Teensys were made by PJRC. and they seem to list a number of US distributors on their website still. (including adafruit)

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#98

Post by ptorrone »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #78
csande17 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adafruit's response seems to be here: https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-... (via https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/01/12/discontinuing-the-teens... ) > in july, we [Adafruit] told sparkfun they needed to get their house in order. for years, sparkfun's leadership ignored specific behavior from leadership (and employees, now former... they had created and promoted hate sites, photoshopped images,…

[flagged]

nate the founder, nick a former employee who worked directly with nate and the now shut-down sparkx effort(s). nate was the ceo, but had stepped down.

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#99

Post by YackerLose »

Y_Y wrote: post #27
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…

Have you also been embargoed from buying shift keys?

Typing in all lowercase makes you look more vulnerable, it's a pretty common rhetorical tactic in PR.

Re: SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

#100

Post by torginus »

skybrian wrote: post #45

I don’t know what’s going on, but I checked what Teensy is up to these days and it seems that last March they decided to outsource manufacturing and direct sales to SparkFun: https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/sparkfun-to-manufac...

Drama aside, why would someone prefer Adafruit or Sparkfun products over much cheaper whitelabel alternatives from China?

A lot of those come with very good support and communities as well.

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