Two weeks ago we wrote about the acquisition of Premier Farnell by the Swiss holding Dätwyler. Now it turns out that the latter only bought a part of the former. Indeed, last week Premier Farnell announced that it completed the sale of Cadsoft, the makers of the popular Eagle PCB and schematic capture software to a subsidiary of Autodesk. Farnell will continue to distribute Eagle, but now on behalf of Autodesk.

To insiders this takeover may not come as a big surprise as Cadsoft and Autodesk were already good business friends, and Cadsoft has been distributing Autodesk products for a while now. More interesting may be the reason of the takeover. From the press release:

"This action follows an operational review, initiated in July 2015, which concluded that Premier Farnell would look to strategically refocus its portfolio and concentrate on its core distribution business, while also reducing its net debt."

Concentrate on its core distribution business, hmm... does that mean that the element14 community website has not met with the success hoped for, even with the support of Eagle? Rumor has it that the DesignSpark community website from competitor RS Components is not doing so well either. Can we take this as proof that it takes more than a lot of money and ambition to create a community?