Because of the avoidance and suppression of discussion (2 threads
closed in short order), after Cy pointed me to his two eBay pages with
his apology, I decided not to mention it on a forum thread. Since I
figured few, if any, of the concerned people would notice the new
eBay pages, I wrote about them, with my own comments and the text
of the apology via the adafruit.com forum system's private message
system to adafruit (Limor and Phil, I understand) and effectively Cced
in that system to Altitude, Brassteacher, antto, Computer Controlled,
isak, darffader and dnigrin. I don't like using such private message
systems and I wanted replies to be via email (
[email protected]) I
never use IRC, instant messenger etc. I didn't have email addresses
for Limor or Phil and only had email addresses for a few of the others.
Shortly, after, I got an email that a private message had arrived. But
my account had been altered so I could neither read nor send private
messages. More such messages arrived while I was sleeping. Now I
can read the messages and the first one is from adafruit, telling me I
can use the forums but not to use the private message system for
this TT matter.
I am glad there is a thread discussing actions Adafruit.com could take
to help resolve the situation. I am not sure what the best approach
would be, in detail.
I can't prove anything absolutely, but I am sure it is not Cy who made
the fake site and extortion letter. He has consistently stated it was a
"friend" who did it, who he later identified as - "Mr He". Cy cites
many bad experiences with adafruit, is angry with them and shows no
sign of believing that further communication would be helpful.
Considering adafruit's repeated avoidance of my critique of their (IMO)
slanderous statements about Cy/TT while they also claim to be
discussing the problems professionally and in public, combined with
locking threads, and blocking private messages . . . and adafruit
wanting to drag out tenuous private email evidence from 6 months
ago that Cy once claimed to have designed the x0xb0x . . . I have
considerable sympathy for Cy's position of not writing to them directly
or via the forum. I am not sure that Cy can access the forum site
anyway - he indicated it was blocked by the Chinese government filter.
The whois record for the fake site can be read here:
http://whois.ename.com/adafruitindustri ... .ename.com
This includes an email address and information which as far as I know
has nothing to do with Cy or TT:
Administrative Contact Information: hezhiya
Registration Date: 2010-7-4
Expiration Date: 2011-7-4
Adafruit state that the same person - who they assume is Cy - has also
registered other domains which resemble "adafruit". The only obvious
one I can think of is ada-fruit.com - but no-one has registered this.
Adafruit stated that the fake site was on the same IP address as the
TT site, but this is not the case and was not the case when I first saw
the fake site.
My best guess is that the fake site and its domain is the work of Mr
He Zhiya. I assumed earlier that it was the work of someone in TT,
because it is at the same hosting company, but perhaps Mr He
uses the same hosting company.
Cy told me this Mr He Zhiya is the same person as timetraveller:
http://forums.adafruit.com/search.php?a ... 3&sr=posts
who wrote two messages in February 2010 requesting help
programming a CPU, and whose third and final message:
http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.ph ... 037#p79037
caused adafruit to assume that this was in fact Cy. AFAIK, Cy has
never written to this site - but I haven't read all the messages.
I have never met or spoken with Cy or anyone else in China. I can't
prove the fake site wasn't made by Cy or someone else in TT.
However, I think it is a mistake for adafruit and anyone else to
assume that there is only one individual behind all this or that the
fake site and its domain is actually the work of TT.
I entirely agree that the control of the fake domain should be returned
to adafruit.com. Last night, Cy described his friend's actions as
juvenile, but its my impression that he was initially more supportive
of the fake site - because both Cy and his friend are angry and
frustrated with adafruit.com. (I have not attempted to follow all the
details, but some of it seems to be in the past and some of it is
continuing, due to the Google prominence of thread 15930, which is
something adafruit.com could change.)
Cy has apologised vie eBay pages 290516602247 and 290515479206
whilst indicating he did not create the fake site: "I apolgoise again
even for issues that have recently ocurred that are out of my control
and not performed by Chipforbrains (cy) technology transplant".
I think it would probably be a mistake to assume that Cy controls the
fake site's domain, so if adafruit are only willing to bury the hatchet
after control of the domain is passed to them, then this feud will
drag on. Whoever it is who controls the domain is a damn fool and
should apologise to everyone for their malevolent actions. Returning
control of the domain to adafruit.com would be a sure sign - probably
the only true sign - they have grown up and recognised their mistakes.
adafruit wrote to me in a private message:
> robin really needs to have cy email us directly as well, he
> can cc: robin if he likes, but he cannot use robin as a middleman.
I have tried to help and I have repeatedly urged Cy to write to the
forums and directly to adafruit. There's no sign he will do this, and
adafruit's insistence on private communication is at odds with their
statement that they are discussing the dispute publicly.
While I have not read all the threads or followed the disputes in
detail, I sense that adafruit are overly willing to raise old complaints
and portray themselves as having been victims of Cy's actions - while
at the same time avoiding discussion of their own actions which
cause ongoing grief for Cy/TT. Some other highly regarded people on
this forum share my concern about thread 15930 and some of the
statements adafruit made in it.
I think a professional approach would involve adafruit taking greater
care with their own statements and withdrawing, deleting or archiving
(for humans, but out of reach of search engines) those things they
wrote which they now recognise as unreasonable and/or no-longer
relevant, and which cause a significant and unwarranted burden to TT.
This doesn't mean that anyone has to agree that Cy, other people at
TT, or Cy's so-called friend(s) have been without fault.
Cy has gone to some trouble in recent days to fix problems of
attribution in the eBay pages and now to apologise for the fake site
debacle.
I don't plan to write more unless someone misrepresents my position
or if adafruit makes changes which I think are helpful.
- Robin
http://www.firstpr.com.au/rwi/dfish/