[mrandish]

Ladyada mentions in the current top post of this thread that they've reached out to the Flux.ai founder to hopefully discuss a mutually satisfactory resolution.

Unilaterally publishing Flux's demand letter probably isn't prohibited but doing so prior to discussion or any notice IS a signal. And it's a signal that could be interpreted by Flux as non-constructive, escalation or possibly even combative. In the absence of clear communication, things can be interpreted incorrectly.

I've been in far too many of these potentially contentious, early-lawyer-letter loops over the decades. It's actually shocking how easily things can spiral into unintended escalation over essentially nothing, especially very early on. And the more things start amping up, even if only in one party's imagination, it's absurd how hard to can be to climb back down. Especially with lawyers in the loop who are incentivized to fully preserve all their client's rights, posture aggressively for tactical position and burn retainer 12 minutes at a time.

I finally started to "get it" after maybe the third time in three years where I discovered after several months, $15,000 and a bunch of stress that the whole stupid thing could have been sorted in the first week by acting slowly, dismissing my assumptions and resisting all my instincts about how to respond. Let's just give these folks a week to see if there's a way to hit CTRL+Z, before we start demanding details just so we can pass meaningless mob judgement on who's right or wrong.

[otterley]

I don’t disagree with you, but if we’re talking about the wisest course of action here—assuming what you’re saying is true—it would be to resolve the matter privately and abstain from publishing this blog post in the first place. Perhaps publishing the letter is an escalation, but so is this. It’s just passive aggressive.

[mrandish]

While I haven't followed this situation, I assumed based on this...

> we have temporarily stopped publishing on the Adafruit blog

That they needed to explain to their audience why they stopped publishing on their blog, and I inferred they might have previously mentioned on social media that an article was in the works, as many blogs do (which might also explain the demand letter). But I don't know for sure, and apparently neither do you.

The only difference is I didn't demand any documents, post uninformed speculation or "reasonably assume" lack of compliance with my demands would be "unclean hands" and "passive aggressive" behavior. I clearly need to work harder at being a more engaged uninformed bystander. I haven't even slung any accusations or roused any rabble yet.

[otterley]

They could just as easily have said nothing at all (and was probably the wisest course). Fewer questions arise from a quiet pause in publishing than from this sort of announcement.

> The only difference is I didn't demand any documents, post uninformed speculation or "reasonably assume" lack of compliance with my demands would be "unclean hands" and "passive aggressive" behavior. I clearly need to work harder at being a more engaged uninformed bystander. I haven't even slung any accusations or roused any rabble yet.

Speaking of passive-aggressive...sheesh.