alt Hacker Newshi, 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 behavior by him and a former employee.
instead of addressing that, they decided to kill the messenger, me, and also cut us off from teensy.
so! instead of posting weirdo "code of conduct" letters, we are doing an open-source alternative. so customers are not stranded, and this is not a supply chain emergency for us. looking forward to seeing which one delights customers more.
as much as nate wants to continue trying to damage limor’s business and adafruit by scraping our site, and now potentially not paying royalties owed after more than a decade of consistent payments, that’s nothing new. it’s a business strategy to cut others out, not a mystery or a “private drama.”
this is exactly why we do open source. when a closed product or exclusive channel is used as leverage, the correct response is to remove the leverage.
sparkfun chose to publish a vague public accusation. once you do that, speculation is inevitable.
ask away!
Replies
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 around the same IMXRT1062? Are you barred from buying Paul's bootloader chips [1]?
[0] https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-...
Oh boy, just what we need. Drama between open hardware vendors. Neither of these responses feels like the complete story to me. I hope there's a path forward to heal this rift in one way or another. Both SparkFun and Adafruit are doing amazing things for the community and I would love to see both continue to thrive.
Do you have a response/explanation for the two specific accusations about forwarding inappropriate emails to sparkfun employees, and involving a customer with something?
Those seem extremely vague, but I didn't see them mentioned in the blog post.
>so! instead of posting weirdo "code of conduct" letters..
one corporate side overshares by pointing fingers and accusing a different corporation...
so that corporation decides to be the better person, declare the opponent as weirdos, then proceed to point fingers at individuals instead for collective action from the public.
nice look, both groups.
> We are now working on an open-source, Teensy-compatible board.
Yeah, right; the PCB art work looks in rather an advanced state of completion that has been in the works for a while due to the proverbial writing being on the wall.
More like, we have now given a brighter green light to our ongoing in-house project to eliminate the supply risk coming from Sparkfun, now that the shit has hit the fan ...
I am a lifelong Sparkfun and Adafruit customer, I grew up and went to engineering school just down the street from Sparkfun.
This event will cause me to no longer be a Sparkfun customer.
There is no one that I have more respect for in this world than limor. She has done more for this industry, education and open source than anyone alive.
Appreciate the transparency! The one thing that doesn't quite add up for me is SparkFun accusing you of "involving a SparkFun customer" in the dispute. Can you comment on what that might be referring to?
Glad to hear that there will by an open source option. This honestly makes the Teensy/Freensy an option for me where before it wasn't.
Is there any thought to expanding the Freensy lineup beyond a pure clone?
Wouldn't be the first time CoC was used as a lame attempt to harm open source.
Thanks for speaking up.
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 SPI over 5v.
Anyhoo, sorry we can’t just stick to the technical drama.
No questions. Just move on. Engaging in public spectacle isn't a good look for anyone.
Trying to parse as I am not in the know. Nate is Nate Seidle, CEO of SparkFun Electronics?
I know SparkFun recently took over Paul Stoffregen and Robin Coon's Teensy production (I reached out at the time and Paul said it was cool).
I'm guessing Adafruit got a special deal in purchasing Teensy's from SparkFun but because of an allegation made by you against Nate, they are responding by dropping your entire product line?
Anyway, good luck to everyone involved. It's a small community of companies that provide for makers.
I thought the Teensys were made by PJRC. and they seem to list a number of US distributors on their website still. (including adafruit)
I understand selling the Teensy line is out of your control, but what does “support” mean exactly in this context? Will related materials stay on your site?
I really hope this doesn’t lead to “boycott” of Teensy per se. I completely sympathize with tensions running high but please reconsider for the good of the community.
Post the emails
Hi phil, appreciate the supposed candor here. I'm just an uninvolved HN observer interested in piecing together all the details of this dispute, here are some follow-up questions:
- The first public claim is that you engaged in targeted social-media harassment of an individual ('discatte') [1], linking various personally-identifiable information to their public profile without consent (name, email and gmail profile pic), and further intentionally misgendering/dead-naming them after being made aware that this was harmful. Do you have any sort of public response to these claims, denying or apologizing for this behavior?
- The second public claim is that the email report you sent to Sparkfun [2] was not simply a 'report' of harassing actions, but itself crossed the line into further harassing behavior ('hi jerks', 'you monsters', etc). Did you really, as claimed, copy the former employee's fiancee's current employer in these email threads as well? Any other context on why this unrelated employer needed to be brought into your dispute?
- Not only SparkFun, but it appears you were also banned from Fossoton [3] for CoC violations related to the dispute with discatte, correct? Any other context on this ban?
- It appears that you also sent another user harassing messages to their Etsy account [4] after objecting to your 'doxxing' of discatte's personal information and blocking you elsewhere, and they reported to you Etsy's trust and safety team. Any other context on this separate incident of alleged harassment?
[1] https://digipres.club/@discatte/115600253924804026
[2] https://gist.github.com/NPoole/df0ec196ac1db7e6eecfd2496b9b4...
[3] https://gist.github.com/NPoole/8e128edb6e32986755450da9285b5...
Links to "hate sites, photoshopped images, and harassment"?
What are the impacts if any to the Stemma QT and Quiic ecosystems?
This post is not a good look. You come off as quite snide. In particular, things like "Sparkfun will not?", calling a CoC concern a weirdo behavior, responding to harassment allegations by saying the did it first.
This seems very much like two businesses experiencing friction and separating, which happens all the time. You coming in and framing the flames makes doesn't scan particularly positively to me.
[dead]
Looks like you guys are handling it right from a consumer standpoint. Thanks for letting us know and for not playing the fingerpointing game in public. Looks like you're not playing at all and just moving on. Nice.
I'm not sure I can trust someone who seems completely oblivious to capital letters.
Why do I need to prove I'm human to read your blog?
If it means anything, the first thought I had reading this post was "I wonder how SparkFun is exaggerating or misrepresenting this situation, because I can't believe Adafruit of all organizations is in the wrong here."