> because I can't believe Adafruit of all organizations is in the wrong here.

I've been hearing about this drama through a group chat for a long time. To be honest, neither side looks good in this one. Both companies have behaved disappointingly at different times for different reasons. I'm not doing this is an arbitrary "both sides" dismissal. There have been actions from both companies that would have been unacceptable in isolation.

The OSHW world revolves a lot around conferences, social media, and IRC/Matrix/Discord servers. Not coincidentally, this feels a lot like old IRC and forum drama of years past.

See additional context for the accusation(s) here[0].

[0] https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-...

My first thought was the same. I used to like Sparkfun but then they closed the source of some of their projects (while often "forgetting" to update their website to reflect that). I was concerned when I saw the headline but just assumed that Sparkfun was probably in the wrong even before I saw the comments.

Same. I was afraid that there was some bad egg that managed to get into Adafruit, or maybe someone was having a real bad day. You never know what kind of person someone is off camera, but Adafruit as a company has always managed to give off the most wholesome vibes.

I'll be interested to see how this unfolds. I have little skin in the game being mostly upstream of the supply chain, but I've had reason to purchase from both companies, and hope this doesn't blow up into a huge thing.

That was my first thought as well, especially given the accusation of code of conduct violation. Not that I think that Adafruit is perfect no matter what, but I would have been shocked if this turned out to be true as stated.

Yeah just to add to this pile, I've always found Adafruit to be one of the most reasonable companies in the space. I've been buying their products for a decade.