Ah, that is pretty illuminating. Insert “adafruit employee / husband of CEO overreacts to internet squabbles and gets a little shrieky because he’s sleep deprived” in there somewhere.

This reminds me of the olden days of small messageboard drama. It’s a shame to see it affect a business relationship between two good companies. Maybe they’ll make up after it all cools off.

sparkfun will continue to use limor’s open source code, libraries, and designs. that is how open source works, and we are fine with that, and that is awesome!

what is not speculation is - paul (teensy creator) told us directly that sparkfun’s decision to block us from purchasing teensy was final. that was not a heat of the moment thing, and it was not handled through normal purchasing channels. i do not even purchase. our purchasing team does. the same is true of the royalty payments sparkfun has made to adafruit for over a decade under standing agreements. there is essentially no day to day interaction. i asked if they are going to keep paying those, no reply yet.

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.

no current sparkfun employee did anything wrong here. one former employee did, and nate’s behavior toward limor has been an issue for years. i am done with that and him, so that part will sort itself out now.