[HN Gopher] Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward
___________________________________________________________________
Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward
Author : phoronixrly
Score : 275 points
Date : 2025-11-18 17:24 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ericmigi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ericmigi.com)
| not_your_vase wrote:
| It's a followup on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45960893
| from a few hours ago
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Core Devices keeps stealing our work_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45960893 - Nov 2025 (110
| comments)
| dewey wrote:
| The mentioned blog post (https://rebble.io/2025/11/17/core-
| devices-keeps-stealing-our...) is a pretty great example why
| using Discord as your main communication tool for an open source
| project is the wrong choice. The only way to read about the
| decisions ("Shortly after, Core forked PebbleOS1 away from public
| maintainership. Back in June, they said that they would merge
| back periodically2;") is to read the manual transcript they added
| to the blog post.
| michaelmior wrote:
| There are solutions such as Answer Overflow[0] that allow
| public indexing and search of Discord content that solve this
| problem.
|
| [0] https://www.answeroverflow.com/
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| This is a pretty predictable response. The problem is, this is a
| classic "he said, she said" situation. So it's pretty tough to
| tell whom you should believe, unless you are close enough to the
| situation to see it first-hand. Clearly someone is not playing
| nice, but it's not clear which party that is. Sucks for the user
| community though, either way.
| tyre wrote:
| Eric has been a pretty stand-up guy when it comes to Pebble. He
| could have been content with an exit (though sad to see it
| wither in the hands of Fitbit => Google), but instead kept the
| dream alive. He bought it back and made another refreshed
| attempt, despite being a YC partner and repeat founder.
|
| It's clear he cares deeply about this product and its
| potential, far and above what the community could hope for. I
| think the default trust should be with him, or at least it is
| for me.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| > It's clear he cares deeply about this product and its
| potential, far and above what the community could hope for. I
| think the default trust should be with him, or at least it is
| for me.
|
| The default trust should be with him instead of _the
| community_ that built and maintained Rebble for a decade?
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's not clear why the community refuses to make the app
| store archive public. It's an archive of other developers'
| work. Doesn't make any sense to say "you can only get these
| from the Rebble website". Just do requester-pays on the S3
| bucket.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| The concern is that it will be imported into a separate
| app store owned by Pebble, which Pebble will lock Rebble
| out of (i.e. block scraping and refuse to release this
| data), and then if Pebble goes bust again, Rebble is left
| with less than they started with.
|
| As I understand it, they almost came to an agreement on
| this:
|
| > We want to give Core's users access to the Rebble App
| Store. (We thought we agreed on that last month.) We're
| happy to commit to maintaining the Web Services. We'd be
| happy to let them contribute and build new features. And
| what we want in return is simple: if we give Core access
| to our data, we want to make sure they're not just going
| to build a walled garden app store around our hard work.
|
| To be clear, the Rebble app store includes more than just
| things uploaded to Pebble - many apps have been created
| and uploaded since Pebble OG shutdown.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Makes sense. They don't want to be EEE'd. Well,
| unfortunate, but this seems like a trust breakdown.
| jjfoooo4 wrote:
| That's the risk you run when you contribute work to open
| source.
|
| Unless there's an accusation that Eric / Core is
| violating license, I don't see a lot of merit to Rebble's
| position.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I think you're 100% right WRT the open-source code Rebble
| developed publicly. The big open question right now seems
| to be about the private app store data Rebble archived
| (and further developed) - which looks legally murky to
| me.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| I think the main sticking point is this:
| 'We're happy to let them build whatever they want as long
| as it doesn't hurt Rebble'
|
| Eric mentions that they want to release free weather APIs
| so apps that show weather don't need to require the user
| to add an API key. As well as voice-to-text
| transcriptions. Rebble offers both of those services as a
| paid subscription. That would hurt Rebble's bottom line.
|
| At the end of the day, Rebble built a business on top of
| scraped Pebble App Store data & open source code. They
| continued to keep their code open source. Eric paid fees
| to gain the rights to any code that wasn't open source.
|
| The Pebble App Store data was never theirs. The
| underlying Pebble code was never theirs. The common
| library isn't theirs, Eric bought it from the
| maintainers.
|
| It really does suck that the Rebble developers could lose
| a decent source of income. But that's what happens when
| you build your business on open source technology that
| you don't own.
|
| But also, they must have some big balls to claim that all
| of the data they scraped from the Pebble App Store is
| THEIR data. I'd like to see the agreements from the pre-
| Rebble devs attesting to that.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| That's certainly the sticking point _for Core._ Also,
| Rebble is a non-profit, not a business.
|
| > But also, they must have some big balls to claim that
| all of the data they scraped from the Pebble App Store is
| THEIR data. I'd like to see the agreements from the pre-
| Rebble devs attesting to that.
|
| Agreed with this, but if it's not theirs, they also
| probably are not legally permitted to release it to
| Pebble (or host their app store, of course.) I am curious
| what the original terms were when they uploaded their
| apps to the OG Pebble app store.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| But they don't have any rights to that data. They don't
| own redistribution rights for the apps.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| So then what Rebble should be asking for is a (written,
| legal) promise that Core's app store will also be public.
|
| This feels like it shouldn't be difficult to hash out.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Not affiliated with Rebble, but IMO another worry is that
| Core Devices takes the store and turns around and says
| "the app/watchface store is for official Pebble hardware
| only via the official Pebble phone app." It's not only
| about Rebble being locked out, but any hypothetical
| future hardware from someone other than Core Devices.
|
| Part of the excitement of the Pebble OS being open
| sourced is that someone else could cook up their own
| watch, either for a different physical style, weird niche
| features, a successor to Pebble Time Round that Core
| Devices so far hasn't shown interest in making, etc. Will
| that happen? Who knows. But I like that it could!
|
| If Core Devices vacuums up the Rebble store, puts Rebble
| out of business, and says any 3rd party Pebble OS devices
| aren't allowed to download apps from the main source,
| that's not good for the open community. I have no idea if
| Core Devices intends to do that, but it would be nice if
| they agreed that the store will stay open for everyone
| with compatible devices.
|
| Whether Rebble has any legal leverage to do that since
| the data they archived from the original Pebble store
| isn't legally theirs to begin with, I have no idea. But
| given that the store's contents only survived because of
| their efforts, it feels like the right thing to do.
| BoredPositron wrote:
| Now I am glad I didn't order a new one. Drama everywhere
| nowadays.
| roughly wrote:
| The difference between this product (and other open source-
| style projects) and every other product you purchase is all the
| drama's happening out in the open. Google, Apple, and Amazon
| all have the kind of infighting that would embarrass the Sun
| King's court, it's just all kept inside the palace walls.
| its-summertime wrote:
| There is drama for Watchy, but I don't think there is any for
| BangleJS (other than being a bit iffy on iphones)
| dbl000 wrote:
| What's the drama with Watchy? I wasn't aware of any but I
| didn't play with mine that much either.
| BoredPositron wrote:
| Yes, and all I said is that I am glad I didn't order one so I
| have one less optional drama in my life.
| diego_moita wrote:
| > Drama everywhere nowadays.
|
| That's the way open source works. Do you think the Linux Kernel
| or Python communities are better?
|
| Btw, that's also the way democracy works. Dictatorships don't
| have drama because they repress it.
| BoredPositron wrote:
| No but in this specific case which for me is merely a toy I
| can easily decide not to engage with it.
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| I sort of agree. I am using gadget bridge with my old watch and
| while it works fine in general...the step tracker,and calories
| burned seem really inconsistent.
|
| The heart rate and oxygen saturation seem accurate compared to
| other devices measuring it.
|
| I wouldn't mind a new watch that was more expensive than my
| current one if it was more accurate and had better setup
| compared to how I had to pair my current device. I'm not
| talking google watch or apple watch, but sub $300 device.
| pokoleo wrote:
| Summarizing the dispute, for anyone interested:
|
| Rebble's "one red line" is "there has to be a future for Rebble
| in there." They fear being replaced/made irrelevant after Core
| builds their own infrastructure using Rebble's work. They want
| guarantees that if they give Core access to the app store data,
| Core won't build a proprietary/walled garden that cuts Rebble
| out. There's also emphasis on "our work," "we built this," "we
| spent hundreds of thousands of dollars." They feel Eric isn't
| acknowledging where his infrastructure came from.
|
| Core Devices' thing is explicitly stating concern about relying
| on a third party (Rebble) for "critical services" his customers
| depend on. If "Rebble leadership changes their mind," they can't
| guarantee customer experience. They wants the app store archive
| to be "freely available" and "not controlled by one
| organization." They don't want to need "permission from Rebble"
| before building features (like free weather, voice-to-text) that
| might compete with Rebble's paid services. The fundamental fear
| seems to be business risk: being at the mercy of a nonprofit's
| decisions when his company has customers and obligations.
|
| Neither side seems to trust the other's long-term intentions,
| creating an impasse where both feel existentially threatened by
| the other's preferred arrangement.
|
| My take: I bought a watch in 2014. After the pebble 2 duo black
| fiasco (they ran out of stock, offered a white instead which I
| accepted 2 weeks ago, never shipped, and have ghosted my emails
| asking for shipping timelines.) I had high hopes, but given the
| messy interaction with the OSS world I'm considering cancelling
| my order for the duo and time two.
| pokoleo wrote:
| They sent an email a few minutes after I posted, saying that
| their fulfillment centre dropped the ball and they're
| escalating internally. I guess complaining on HN worked.
|
| Hope they can figure out the dispute with Rebble. Maybe they
| end up hosting apps on a package manager and create some
| binding contract?
| margalabargala wrote:
| > They fear being replaced/made irrelevant after Core builds
| their own infrastructure using Rebble's work. They want
| guarantees that if they give Core access to the app store data,
| Core won't build a proprietary/walled garden that cuts Rebble
| out.
|
| It's understandable that Rebble fears someone doing this, since
| this is what Rebble did.
|
| Rebble took the original open-source Pebble work of thousands
| of independent developers, scraped it off the original store,
| and is re-offering it within their own walled garden and
| calling it "theirs".
|
| It's great Rebble kept things alive but they seem to be fearing
| a second one of themselves.
|
| > being at the mercy of a nonprofit's decisions when his
| company has customers and obligations.
|
| Both Rebble and Core Devices are for-profit companies, neither
| is a non-profit, so I'm not actually sure which you're
| referring to here.
| apparent wrote:
| > Both Rebble and Core Devices are for-profit companies,
| neither is a non-profit, so I'm not actually sure which
| you're referring to here.
|
| Looks like Rebble is now a nonprofit?
|
| > have evolved along the way from a loose collection of co-
| conspirators, to Rebble Alliance, LLC, to our current non-
| profit Rebble Foundation [1]
|
| 1: https://rebble.io/2025/10/09/rebbles-in-a-world-with-
| core.ht...
| margalabargala wrote:
| I did some digging in a reply to a sibling comment.
|
| Basically, they are not a 501c3. They are a Michigan state
| specific nonprofit. My original comment was made after a
| 501c3 search turned up nothing.
|
| I don't know why they would decline to be a 501c3 and
| instead only be a Michigan nonprofit.
| apparent wrote:
| Huh that seems very odd. And it's strange (and possibly
| misleading) to say you are a "non-profit" under these
| circumstances.
|
| Any chance they recently changed status, and it's just
| not showing up yet?
| margalabargala wrote:
| > Any chance they recently changed status, and it's just
| not showing up yet?
|
| The Rebble Foundation incorporated in 2023, so I don't
| think so.
|
| I agree it's strange. The advantages of being a 501c3 in
| the US are _immense_ , and if you meet the criteria, it
| is not difficult to become one. Essentially every
| organization larger than 6 people in the US that could be
| a 501c3, is one, for this reason.
|
| So if they aren't, I assume it's because they can't be.
| Which makes me wonder why.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Just FYI. 501(c)(3) is not the only federal nonprofit
| designation.
|
| I have dealt with 501(c)(7) (basically a club), and I
| suspect there are others.
| margalabargala wrote:
| There are a lot, but most of them are _extremely_
| narrowly defined. There are not many into which Rebble
| could fit.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501(c)_organization#Types
| pavon wrote:
| The 501c3 tax exception is specifically for charitable
| organizations, and the law and IRS interpretations
| exclude a number of groups that would colloquially fall
| under that description. On top of that there are many
| groups who aren't doing charitable work, but want to
| reinvest all revenue back into the organization and not
| be beholden to shareholders (private or public).
| margalabargala wrote:
| That's not true. Charitable organizations are just one of
| many groups that qualify as a 501c3.
|
| Groups dedicated to scientific, literary or educational
| purposes also quality.
|
| The reason this is a problem is that Rebble is using
| their being a "non-profit" as a point of advertisement
| but there is essentially no difference between someone
| owning a for-profit company, and someone controlling and
| heading a non-profit company where they set their own
| salary and are not a 501c3.
| shreddit wrote:
| Rebble sounds pretty much like a non profit to me
|
| > The Rebble Foundation is a non-profit organization that
| keeps the Pebble community alive. rebble.io
|
| https://rebble.foundation/
| margalabargala wrote:
| They aren't a 501c3. When I wrote my original comment I did
| a search for Rebble among all 501c3 ores and they are not
| there.
|
| I looked closer after your comment. They appear to be a
| "Michigan Domestic Non-Profit Corporation".
|
| Why aren't they a 501c3? I have no idea. It makes me trust
| them less to be honest, that they are some sort of
| nonprofit but not a 501c3.
| c22 wrote:
| 501c3 offers one narrow form of tax exempt status for a
| very specific type of non-profit organization with
| specific privileges and duties. Every organization is
| unique and many non-profit, tax-exempt, and even
| charitable organizations exist outside of that specific
| framework.
|
| If they're not soliciting donations from you I'm not sure
| why you'd care about their federal tax status.
| apparent wrote:
| > If they're not soliciting donations from you I'm not
| sure why you'd care about their federal tax status.
|
| Well, if they portray themselves as a "nonprofit" then
| most people who read that will think they are a 501c3,
| which is almost always the case. I don't know why they
| don't qualify for that status (if they don't), but it's
| possible that it's a reason I would care about when
| deciding whom to side with on issues like this one.
|
| The battle of for-profit versus non-profit comes across
| differently than for-profit versus Michigan Domestic Non-
| Profit Corporation (which for some reason does not
| qualify for IRS nonprofit designation).
| int_19h wrote:
| It's not "almost always the case". It may be the case for
| nonprofits that people _donate to_ , but in general there
| are quite a few 501c4 around, for example, and there are
| many others:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501(c)_organization#Types
| margalabargala wrote:
| The list may be long, but most other categories are
| _extremely_ narrow. There are very few into which Rebble
| could fit.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > If they're not soliciting donations from you I'm not
| sure why you'd care about their federal tax status.
|
| Because if they appear to be a normal company but call
| themselves a non-profit, I want to know what that
| actually means to them.
|
| Being a non-profit is generally a reason for community
| goodwill towards a company. Therefore being a nonprofit
| is attractive both to companies doing good, and
| charlatans seeking to capitalize on that goodwill.
|
| If you call yourself a nonprofit but don't talk anywhere
| about what that means to you and why, then you look like
| that second option.
| cweagans wrote:
| I am neither an accountant nor a lawyer, but I have set
| up a 501c3 before.
|
| I think you have a misunderstanding of how that works. In
| many cases, you need _both_ the state and federal non-
| profit designation (i.e. a Michigan domestic non-profit
| corporation would not pay state income taxes on
| charitable income + that same corporation would need the
| 501c3 designation from the IRS to have the same benefit
| at the federal level).
|
| Do you have positive confirmation that they are not
| filing as a 501c3?
| margalabargala wrote:
| > I think you have a misunderstanding of how that works.
| In many cases, you need both the state and federal non-
| profit designation (i.e. a Michigan domestic non-profit
| corporation would not pay state income taxes on
| charitable income + that same corporation would need the
| 501c3 designation from the IRS to have the same benefit
| at the federal level).
|
| Yes, I'm aware. And since the lions share of taxes is
| often federal, the 501c3 step does not generally get
| skipped, like it does here. Why would they voluntarily
| give themselves federal tax exposure if they were able to
| avoid it?
|
| > Do you have positive confirmation that they are not
| filing as a 501c3?
|
| I am positive that it has been over 2 years since they
| filed as a Michigan domestic non-profit. Therefore we all
| have positive confirmation that they did not attempt to
| become a 501c3 with an organization capable of doing so,
| at the time they became a nonprofit. It does not take 2
| years to become a 501c3.
|
| I can't speak to their plans for the future.
| palmotea wrote:
| >> They fear being replaced/made irrelevant after Core builds
| their own infrastructure using Rebble's work. They want
| guarantees that if they give Core access to the app store
| data, Core won't build a proprietary/walled garden that cuts
| Rebble out.
|
| > It's understandable that Rebble fears someone doing this,
| since this is what Rebble did.
|
| That's an extremely uncharitable take. It's not like Rebble
| drove Pebble out of business. What I gather is basically
| Pebble fell apart on its own, and Rebble picked up the pieces
| to keep things working.
|
| It seems what Core wants do here is take what Rebble
| build/maintained and drive Rebble into irrelevance.
| gorbachev wrote:
| Core went bankrupt once doing exactly what they want to do now.
| I think the concern users will be left holding the bag, again,
| is reasonable.
| apparent wrote:
| Pebble went out of business but Core is set up very
| differently. They have an incredibly lean team and Eric
| appears to have self-funded much of the HW and SW development
| before taking a dime from customers.
|
| There's a chance that some awful fate will befall Eric, of
| course, but other than that I am not especially concerned
| that the new company will fold. Eric seems to understand what
| caused that outcome, and is specifically looking to avoid
| making the same mistakes.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| I view this entire thing through an extremely simple, reductive
| lens:
|
| Rebble effectively had free reign on this ecosystem for years,
| and could have at any time decided to try and capitalize on it
| further. They still can! But instead they're apparently
| interested in rent seeking while Core makes real headway.
|
| It's clear that Eric and Core want to make something now. It's
| not clear what Rebble wants, but it's clear they are feeling left
| out. That obviously sucks but it's clear from what both sides are
| saying that Core has been trying to involve Rebble in their
| efforts. That's certainly noble and I'm not sure others would do
| the same.
|
| Would Eric be able to do this all without Rebble? Lots of
| commenters have been saying "no" but I'm skeptic. I was an early
| Pebble user. I stopped using it before they went bust, and while
| I was aware of Rebble, there was nothing compelling there for me.
| It's neat that they have maintained a copy of the original
| watchfaces but beyond that I don't perceive a ton of value. I
| don't like the subscription fee. I'm sad they never took a
| serious crack at making a Rebble watch.
|
| I hope everyone finds a way forward, together, but I'm not
| optimistic.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| The subscription fee was what enabled them to host these
| services. From their blog post, they mention spending hundreds
| of thousands of dollars on infrastructure and software. I
| expect that the connections and skills involved in running the
| Rebble web services don't directly translate to creating a
| hardware product.
|
| That said, I think you are right that Rebble is feeling left
| out - and that it is hard to figure out exactly how they can
| fit into Core's vision. But I think there are a couple of
| primary and immediate issues:
|
| 1. Core wants Rebble's data - so clearly there is value here,
| but Core is framing this debacle like Rebble is irrelevant.
| Also, I don't know that Google would've ever released PebbleOS
| if Rebble didn't exist
|
| 2. Rebble wants to see the future of Pebble remain open-source
| or at least compatible with their services, so that if Pebble
| goes bust again, the community can continue on
| modeless wrote:
| Core doesn't want Rebble's data. They want the data from the
| original Pebble store, which is _not_ owned by Rebble. It 's
| the work of thousands of independent developers and it should
| be shared freely, not kept in a walled garden with "no
| scraping" terms added on. It's actually offensive that Rebble
| is using other developers' data (that they originally scraped
| from Pebble) as a bargaining chip in their contract
| negotiation that they made into a public squabble.
| nosrepa wrote:
| So, this?
|
| https://github.com/aveao/PebbleArchive/tree/master/PebbleAp
| p...
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I don't think that's quite right - Rebble has updated a
| number of these apps to keep them supported. As sibling
| commenter posted, the original apps are available publicly.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Updated themselves? Or accepted/hosted updates from third
| parties?
| Anonbrit wrote:
| Updated themselves
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| I'll be totally honest: I have no idea what they possibly
| spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on. That seems totally
| absurd and reckless.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Yeah. If they'd said "hundreds, or maybe thousands of
| dollars", ok, sure. But that just cannot possibly be an
| inherently expensive service to host.
| joelhaasnoot wrote:
| There is also weather and voice recognition services. If
| implemented with third party APIs those costs can add up.
| modeless wrote:
| They charged a subscription for those. If they lost money
| on that they have nobody to blame but themselves.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| This thread is very confusing to me - they charged a
| subscription for these features. They weren't losing
| money - they were spending it. Money in, money out.
| modeless wrote:
| Their original statement was "we've spent hundreds of
| thousands of dollars on storing and hosting the data"
| that was scraped from the Pebble app store. So,
| explicitly not on the other services. I have to agree
| with other commenters that $200,000+ seems like an
| extravagant bill for hosting this data for 8 years with a
| web frontend and maybe 20,000 users.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I think this is a bit of a disingenuous reading of the
| article when the surrounding text states:
|
| > Since then, we built a replacement app store API that
| was compatible with the old app store front end. We built
| a storage backend for it, and then we spent enormous
| effort to import the data that we salvaged. We've built a
| totally new dev portal, where y'all submitted brand new
| apps that never existed while Pebble was around. [...]
| And the App Store that we've built together is much more
| than it was when Pebble stopped existing. We've patched
| hundreds of apps with Timeline and weather endpoint
| updates. We've curated removal requests from people who
| wanted to unpublish their apps. And it has new versions
| of old apps, and brand new apps from the two hackathons
| we've run!
|
| All of these things take time and money.
| modeless wrote:
| None of that is included in their statement that "we've
| spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on storing and
| hosting the data". If they meant that they spent hundreds
| of thousands of dollars on building a dev portal,
| patching apps, and the other stuff you mention, they
| should have said that instead of "storing and hosting the
| data".
| johnmaguire wrote:
| You are choosing a very literal interpretation, which is
| fine, if you think it is useful. To me, it looks
| disingenuous and irrelevant. The hosting and storage of
| that data would have been pointless without this
| additional development. And arguably, the app store
| development _is_ part of hosting it.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Cool, it is imperative those services are not operated at
| a loss. If you choose to do charity, you best make peace
| with the fact that you will never get either the time nor
| the money back.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I don't think they were operating as a charity - they
| were charging for the features that cost them money to
| provide... that's how they spent the aforementioned
| money.
|
| They funded some software development, they paid hosting
| bills, and they paid third party services for weather
| data, etc.
| eptcyka wrote:
| So they cashflowed the services they provided. And
| they're not hunderds of thousands of dollars out of
| pocket on this, right? So what are they complaining
| about? Are they worried about losing their revenue stream
| or what?
| johnmaguire wrote:
| This thread started with OP calling Pebble rentseeking
| and used the subscription services as an example. I
| replied to point out that the subscription fees were used
| to fund services and development - they weren't profit.
| Then the thread went off the rails with some claiming
| that spending money is proof that Rebble is incompetent
| and others claiming that they shouldn't be whining about
| spending money (which they weren't) and I'm no longer
| clear what point you are trying to make.
|
| Stated elsewhere in thread, I believe the primary concern
| is that Rebble will import the data into a separate,
| closed app store owned by Pebble, which Pebble will lock
| Rebble out of (i.e. block scraping and refuse to release
| this data), and then if Pebble goes bust again, Rebble is
| left with less than they started with.
| quantumwoke wrote:
| Developer time?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Yeah agreed, and I hope the Rebble people read this. They're
| being very protective and Eric is seemingly _trying_ to include
| them when he could literally just shut them out.
|
| They did good work in absence of anyone maintaining the
| product, but they're running software on a product they
| literally did nothing to build.
| infotainment wrote:
| Agreed -- While I admire their work in keeping the lights on,
| Rebble doesn't necessarily make sense in a world where the
| "real" Pebble company has returned.
|
| Keep in mind that this is their goal statement (straight from
| their FAQ):
|
| _> Our goal is to maintain and advance Pebble functionality,
| in the absence of Pebble Technology Corp._
|
| Eric's new company, by effectively re-creating Pebble
| Technology Corp, is an existential threat to that mission: If
| there is someone else maintaining and advancing Pebble
| functionality, then what is the purpose of Rebble? It does seem
| unfortunate though -- I hope they can all work something out.
| spiffytech wrote:
| I largely agree, but I think there's merit to Rebble's
| argument that Core Devices could be here today, gone
| tomorrow. I'd hate to see Pebble die _again_ only for Rebble
| to have disbanded in the meanwhile. Then the community has
| nothing but code repos.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| the OS is open sourced, so it's much less attached to Core
| Devices than the first go around
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Why is Rebble so set on protecting this code that would have an
| incredibly limited shelf life if not for the new Pebble devices?
| It seems like an incredibly short-sighted fight against someone
| who (legally) owes them 0 unless they can substantiate the
| allegation that Pebble stole their code ( _theirs_ not being code
| they themselves scraped after Pebble 's initial failure).
| jamesbelchamber wrote:
| What an entirely avoidable lose-lose bust-up.
| apparent wrote:
| IDK that it was entirely avoidable, but it sure is a shame that
| they're spending cycles on this rather than getting the PT2s
| out the door. Looks like shipping has already slipped from Dec
| 25 to Jan 26:
|
| > We're aiming to start shipping in January.
| Defletter wrote:
| This is a bit of a what-if, but I had a Pebble watch back then
| and was considering trying to make an app for it. The idea that,
| if I had succeeded and published the app, that Rebble would be
| claiming ownership over _my_ binary and threatening legal action
| against the original Pebble creator, to be really quite
| ridiculous and affronting.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| I am one of the developers who did make Pebble apps - here's a
| screenshot with the Pebble version of Weathergraph on Eric's
| watch: https://x.com/weathergraph/status/1959253197664469246
|
| Today is the day I found out Rebble is claiming the ownership
| of my app's binaries. All I can say is that they don't have it.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I don't understand this.
|
| The original Pebble threw them away. They have no claim on
| any of whatever exists now. They just want it for obvious
| reasons.
|
| Rebble clearly honors copyright, ex: removing apps on request
| of the author. Thst's the only right any copyright holder
| ever has is to say you can't redistribute copies.
|
| So you can request they remove your app any time you want.
|
| And you are obviously free to give Core a copy of your app
| yourself any time you want.
|
| So what's the problem? Where in the world is "They think they
| own my binaries!" in that? What in the ever loving hell are
| you talking about?
|
| Next, in fact they do own those actual binaries the same way
| you own a physical book. If you publish something and I
| receive a copy, whether it's a physical book or dvd or a free
| download, I do actually own that copy. Your rights over it
| are only the copyright. You can say that I can't redistribute
| more copies. That's it.
|
| The point being, you have no slightest hint of any kind of
| right to say "Hey I deleted my original. Give me back that
| download."
|
| Core simply wants something that as far as I can tell they
| have no right to.
|
| Rebble does not claim to "own" your app, they only claim to
| have done a lot of work saving and patching abandoned apps
| and recreated a whole service for managing and distributing
| them, wrote new apps, published new apps along with the old,
| to support watch owners that Pebble abandoned.
|
| They didn't "take" anything, they rescued stuff other people
| threw away. Now Core wants not only what Pebble threw away,
| but also everything Rebble did since then.
|
| Seriously I do not understand why so many of the comments on
| this article take Core's side. Fuck them as far as I can see.
|
| Core could have easily developed a way to incorporate or join
| the existing Rebble ecosystem without insisting on taking it
| over. They could still do whatever new development they want,
| and could work on bringing themselves up to speed to being
| able to supply all services in parallel so that they aren't
| actually dependant on the external Rebble for their own
| business. At some later time Rebble could go bad and Core
| could just be up to speed and watch owners could switch over
| to Core easy peasy. They could have their own app store where
| they don't have to ask Rebbles permission for anything. They
| could do that cooperatively but instead they are being huge
| inconsiderate assholes.
|
| Core is not willing to allow Rebble to exist _now that Core
| has appeared after all these years_. "Now that I'm here, you
| have to disappear, oh and also give me all that stuff."
| Excuse me what? I mean seriously how is anyone calling Core
| the abused party here?
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > Rebble does not claim to "own" your app, they only claim
| to have done a lot of work saving and patching abandoned
| apps and recreated a whole service for managing and
| distributing them, wrote new apps, published new apps along
| with the old, to support watch owners that Pebble
| abandoned.
|
| Because they never had the right to redistribute it.
|
| This is like YouTube shutting down and me offering a bunch
| of videos I download for free, claiming that setting up a
| portal was a lot of work so I get rights.
|
| I'd get sued to high heaven and the only reason Rebble is
| getting away with it is that the watch face developers
| aren't big outfits with lawyers.
| Larrikin wrote:
| As long as I can get my data from my watch into Home Assistant
| and maybe Google Health, I'll keep my preorder. Hopefully this
| drama gets resolved but I never used any of the apps on my soon
| to be replaced Fitbit.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| If nobody trusts either party to keep up their end of the
| bargain, why not solve it with licensing?
|
| Isn't this the exact point of copyleft licenses?
|
| Relicense PebbleOS as GPL, relicense Rebble as AGPL.
|
| Problem is then solved, no?
| weinzierl wrote:
| Almost. The excessive CLA had to go too (or be replaced by a
| DCO).
|
| CLAs may have a place, but as long as they hadn't planned on a
| bait and switch all along they wouldn't need a CLA literally
| copied from Oracle's playbook.
| mcny wrote:
| > I disagree. I'm working hard to keep the Pebble ecosystem open
| source. I believe the contents of the Pebble Appstore should be
| freely available and not controlled by one organization.
|
| I hate to say this but I have to agree with Eric. I want to side
| with Rebble But they are clearly misguided. The goal should not
| be to have an ongoing revenue stream for Rebble.
|
| The goals should be
|
| If and when Eric sells out again, there is a way for
|
| 1. all pebble and core devices to continue to get updates somehow
| (Rebble or otherwise)
|
| 2. all apps and metadata will continue to be available somehow
| (Rebble or otherwise)
|
| The otherwise is key here. If someone wants to not use Rebble,
| they should be able to do that.
|
| Rebble is not the end goal. Core is not the end goal. The users
| are.
| abhorrence wrote:
| I think your points 1 and 2 are exactly spot on. And, assuming
| that both Rebble's and Eric's are being relatively forthright,
| that Eric is the one that is actually trying to come to an
| agreement that accomplishes that. Whereas Rebble is taking the
| position of "only we can be trusted".
|
| And with all the people replying to the original Rebble post
| with "I'm canceling my preorder", I'm pretty worried that
| Rebble has created a self-fulfilling prophecy situation. :(
| girvo wrote:
| On the other hand when you have the person Eric quoted saying
| this like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/1p0h
| uk5/comment/npj...
|
| It makes me incredibly suspicious of Eric's motivations for
| some of this, and makes me less inclined to trust him.
| apparent wrote:
| > My goal this time round is to make it sustainable.
|
| Was I the only one to get excited when I saw "time round" in a
| sentence written on Eric's blog? It took a second for me to
| realize this had nothing to do with the amazing PTR.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| You and me both. I have a Pebble Time 2 on order (said I'd buy
| one if they made it less ugly, and they did!) but what I really
| want is a Round.
|
| The downside of the old one was the battery life, on the order
| of 2 days when the battery is new compared to a week with the
| larger models. But they've been talking about how the new
| bluetooth hardware is more efficient and should let them get
| the Pebble Time battery life up to 30 days this time. One
| imagines that efficiency would get a new PTR up to a week which
| is plenty. Frankly with monthly charging I'm a little worried
| I'll lose the charger between uses.
|
| One thing I'm worried about is the thickness of the heart rate
| sensor, which could be even trickier with how small a Round
| should be. And that feels like table stakes for a wearable
| today, I'd buy one without it but I might be in the minority.
| amatecha wrote:
| Ignoring all else, did private conversation participants consent
| to their messages being posted publicly in this post?
| quantumwoke wrote:
| Nope:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/1p0huk5/pebble_rebb...
| jwise0 wrote:
| As someone else posted a link to the Reddit thread, I posted
| there to say, roughly, 'no, I'm pretty unhappy about it'.
| skylurk wrote:
| I felt pretty uncomfortable reading those screenshots myself.
| Messages obviously sent in confidence.
| 827a wrote:
| The amount of internet drama a smartwatch that stopped being
| produced ten years ago generates even to this day is truly
| incredible. Nothing that's happening here is so important as to
| make enemies, and the fact that Core Devices even _wants_ to use
| the open source app store and is willing to pay for it should
| have been an immediate "Yes, that's incredible, lets make it
| work" from Rebble. So what if they get bought by Fitbit or go
| closed source? Rebble will just be back to where they were
| before. That's the beauty of open source; it doesn't need them,
| it just needs people who are interested in the project.
| quantumwoke wrote:
| For some additional context, the screenshotted Rebble board
| member has commented here:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/1p0huk5/pebble_rebb...
|
| Looks like they were not consulted by Eric before this post.
| evil-olive wrote:
| this part of the response doesn't pass the smell test for me:
|
| > Accusation 4: '[Eric] scraped our app store, in violation of
| the agreement that we reached with him previously'
|
| > Here's what happened. I wanted to highlight some of my
| favourite watchfaces on the Pebble Appstore. Last Monday Nov 10,
| after I put my kids to sleep and between long calls with
| factories in Asia, I started building a webapp to help me quickly
| go through Pebble Appstore and decide which were my top picks.
|
| > Let me be crystal clear - my little webapp did not download
| apps or 'scrape' anything from Rebble. The webapp displayed the
| name of each watchface and screenshots and let me click on my
| favs. I used it to manually look through 6000 watchfaces with my
| own eyes. I still have 7,000 to go. Post your server logs, they
| will match up identically to the app I (well...Claude) wrote
| (source code here)
|
| so it wasn't "scraping"...it was just a vibe-coded webapp that
| made _at least_ 6,000 requests to Rebble 's servers in a short
| period of time? possibly more, depending on how many intermediate
| versions of the app he tested, and possibly _many_ more, if one
| of those intermediate versions had a vibe-coded "feature" like
| prefetching a bunch of data for performance reasons?
|
| he agreed not to scrape their services. and then scraped their
| services. and his excuse seems to boil down to "but I was doing
| it for a cool reason"
|
| and he tosses in completely unrelated details about putting his
| kids to bed and having long calls with factories in Asia. those
| seem calculated to make him sound more relatable - an honest,
| hardworking, humble family man.
|
| this seems like a relatively minor point in the overall dispute,
| but if he's unwilling or unable to take any responsibility there,
| it doesn't boost my confidence that he's being honest about the
| rest of it.
| apparent wrote:
| I think the key question is whether the automated actions
| resulted in information being retained by Pebble. If it was
| just going through a motion and pulling some data (or pulling
| all data but only keeping some of it), then that would be
| consistent with Eric's story and not be the kind of scraping
| that Rebble is worried about. They're worried about the content
| being archived somewhere else, and they seem to think that
| happened. But did it?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| It might not be the kind of scraping rebble is worried about,
| but a bunch of requests to extract data into another form is
| very plainly scraping and the contract doesn't differentiate
| based on intent or whether the process is entirely automated.
| The entire contract is similarly loose and informal, which
| contributes to these sorts of misunderstandings.
|
| The most reasonable solution would have been for Eric to send
| an email first, but few contract disputes start with everyone
| doing the most reasonable thing.
| fphhotchips wrote:
| One thing I'm confused about in this whole thing is what
| makes Rebble think they have a right to the data in the first
| place? They scraped it! "We don't like you scraping the data
| we scraped" doesn't hold water for me, whether Eric retained
| it or not.
| apparent wrote:
| Yeah, they definitely started by scraping. Apparently 500
| of the 13,500 apps were submitted post-Pebble, and Rebble
| also apparently did a bunch of other upgrades over time.
|
| But you're right that there's some hypocrisy here, given
| their roots, and they don't really acknowledge that.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think the whole conversation shows how ridiculous it is
| to be worried so much about who's "scraping" what. The
| open web is designed to be public and permissive. If you
| don't want someone accessing "your" content, then don't
| serve it to the public. And if you do decide to serve to
| the public, don't complain when someone accesses that
| data in a way you don't like. The Internet would be so
| much better without all these people obsessed about how
| their bits were being accessed and about whether X counts
| as "scraping" or Y counts as "scraping." Good grief,
| people! Find something else to worry about.
| apparent wrote:
| Perhaps in general, but in this case it seems like they
| did have an agreement not to scrape, which overrides the
| general scrape-at-will ethos that you're describing.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Pebble threw it away, Rebble did not, and Core is a
| newcomer whith no right to anything.
| Dayshine wrote:
| Scraping is about harvesting data. Just using the API like any
| other user is clearly not scraping.
|
| Is browsing linkedin scraping? Is browsing hacker news through
| an alternate client scraping?
|
| No, scraping is _rehosting_ hacker news.
| intrasight wrote:
| I do not believe that's the proper definition of "scraping"
| stavros wrote:
| Scraping has a very clear meaning here, that of exfiltrating
| data to store. If he just loaded some images to memory so he
| could pick favorites, that doesn't fit any definition of
| scraping I'm aware of.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| I never heard someone say bulk downloading and data
| extraction wasn't scraping if it used volatile storage.
| stavros wrote:
| When have you seen someone scrape data for volatile
| storage?
| jacobgkau wrote:
| It's irrelevant to the definition of "scraping." Scraping
| from a website is grabbing data, in bulk, not through the
| website's own interface. It doesn't matter if you save
| the data, use it in RAM, or just download directly into
| `/dev/null`. Just like scraping paint off of a wall is
| still "scraping" whether you're letting it fall onto the
| floor, collecting it into a trashcan, or sweeping it out
| the door afterwards.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Price comparison. Alternative front ends.
| mazambazz wrote:
| From the post on rebble.io
|
| > We made it absolutely clear to Eric that scraping for
| commercial purposes was not an authorized use of the Rebble Web
| Services.
|
| So, another point of consideration is whether looking at names
| and pictures so you can personally favorite them constitutes as
| commercial use. Based on what Eric said, I don't really think
| so.
| stevage wrote:
| > I wanted to highlight some of my favourite watchfaces on
| the Pebble Appstore.
|
| It was for a commercial purpose. Not a personal one.
| Zetaphor wrote:
| If you're looking for an alternative to all of this, the BangleJS
| v2 is both cheaper and more hackable than the Pebble watches. It
| doesn't tick all of the same boxes, but it's performed well for
| me over the last 6 months.
|
| Here's what it offers:
|
| * Screen is fully visible under direct sunlight
|
| * With the screen always on the battery lasts me well over a week
|
| * Heart rate monitor
|
| * EXTREMELY hackable, everything can be hacked on with JS, even
| the launcher you're using for apps
|
| * 108 Euros shipped to the US
|
| * Fully supported by GadgetBridge (open source mobile app)
|
| https://www.espruino.com/Bangle.js2
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Thanks for posting, I love getting gadgets with niche displays,
| a 3 bit color sun readable display, how peculiar!
| philistine wrote:
| Don't remove that little tape that prevents the watch from
| shocking you with 3 continuous volts of electricity!
| Animats wrote:
| Pebble was a smart watch which was not tethered to a phone,
| talked to the cellular network directly, and had battery life
| problems, correct? Apple's smart watch was tethered to a phone,
| so it needed less power.
|
| It's going to be interesting to see what happens when solid state
| batteries become available and increase how much energy you can
| store in a watch. They're high cost, but if you're powering a
| watch, not a car, probably affordable. That could make standalone
| watches more effective. Maybe eliminate the need to carry a phone
| all the time.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| The opposite, Pebble is tethered to a phone, has Bluetooth but
| no cellular. Not even its own wifi connection, any data that a
| watch app needs is requested over bluetooth from the companion
| app on the phone, which fetches it from the internet.
|
| Battery life was great, upwards of a week between charges,
| because connectivity features were very limited. It gets
| notifications, but you're not taking phone calls or checking
| email through it.
| iamevn wrote:
| Pebble smart watches are tethered (to an android/ios device via
| bluetooth), do not talk to a cellular network, and have had an
| especially good battery life because of that and their low-
| power displays which are always on and visible with external
| light, only turning on the backlight when you are using it
| (e.g. hitting buttons or after giving the watch a little
| shake). afaik, every Pebble watch has had a significantly
| longer battery life than all of Apple's watches even though
| they're always displaying.
|
| The newer Pebbles do have a better battery life, lasting
| multiple weeks maybe thanks of better battery tech.
| gmarull wrote:
| Hi there, Gerard here. I work for Core as a firmware engineer,
| happy to answer questions as well.
|
| I personally understand Rebble fears, for example when we forked
| and kept development under Core Github. However, I think we tried
| to be as transparent as possible and explained the reasons
| behind. While Liam (ex-Pebble) did an excellent job integrating
| NimBLE, it is also true that we also offered to do the work.
| However he had more availability by then to do so. At the same
| time, we fixed quite a few bugs after integration, or implemented
| many missing non-trivial features to make it functional. If you
| also check Github statistics, you will see that as of today ~93%
| of commits are from Core employees or paid contractors.
|
| All development is happening in the open, and released under
| Apache-2.0 license. This is an exception in the industry,
| specially for core product components. It is also common for
| companies to fork when developing new products because you need
| to move fast (check our commit rate!). Think about Linux, can you
| use upstream Kernel on most new ARM SoCs? No. Core took a risk
| here because Rebble could have kept adding new features, adding
| overhead for us with upmerges. Reality is that Rebble repository
| has been dead since we forked. Nobody except Core, and Liam were
| contributing by then.
|
| Another fear I've heard is about PebbleOS being sold to another
| company. Well, the company doing that would be pretty dumb as
| they could clone it for 0$. And thanks to Apache-2.0, they could
| even add new proprietary features! Not only that, but if Core
| winds up, the IP will stay open forever!
|
| I think the best, fair long-term solution is to join a well
| established OSS organization. Rebble lacks many formalities that
| are common in many OSS projects: board elections, open and
| regular meetings, public accounts, voting rules, etc. This makes
| it a dysfunctional community to me. It is up to Rebble to fix
| these problems or join forces in a new OSS org. Core can't do
| much more than that. It is also not bad that the two parts have
| different views, e.g. Core may think a local voice-to-text model
| is better but Rebble may disagree because that could imply a
| revenue loss. That's unavoidable, in the end, people could choose
| at that point.
| stevage wrote:
| Seems like there is a commercial agreement between the two
| parties, but it somehow doesn't capture everything they need.
| They're relying on some kind of unspoken agreement but now they
| don't trust each other. they should make a new agreement.
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| Dunno if you saw the previous post about the situation, but
| seems that attempts to do so for months have not born fruit,
| and only led to more trust breakdown.
| Havoc wrote:
| The scraping part seems very weak. You can't sign an agreement
| that says no scraping and then proceed to build a scraping bot
| and think it's ok because you only wanted to "look" at the data.
|
| I'd definitely have doubts about the partnership too
| asadm wrote:
| It seems Rebble has no moat here. The end devices are all
| controlled by Pebble which can point them to any store they want.
|
| That must be making Rebble upset?
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Rebble's moat is the content from pre 2018 that they are
| illegally redistributing.
| gortok wrote:
| None of this looks good for either side.
|
| Eric wants the App Store data.
|
| Rebble doesn't want all their work used to enrich a company that
| has already failed once at the expense of the work they have put
| in.
|
| It seems like both parties somehow feel like they're holding the
| winning hand and can bend the other to their will.
|
| Neither party seems to realize they're dependent on the other for
| their success.
|
| Both sides are slinging mud, and everyone is losing.
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