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.
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
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.
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.
Updated themselves? Or accepted/hosted updates from third parties?
Updated themselves
Are they still open source? If so, why does it matter who updated them?
I think that’s the crux of the issue is rebble isn’t under any obligation distribute them open source, unless say the original app had a “copyleft” policy?
AFAIK the original apps were individually licensed by the creators... so Rebble would need to have permission before claiming anything for their own except in the case of explicit permissive licenses (like MIT). In some cases (copyleft licenses) Rebble would be required to make their maintenance also open source.
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.
Seems cheap to me. Host anything and you're gonna need developers. Developers are expensive. A hundred thousand dollars is pretty much what you'd pay for a single developer in a year. 5 Devs is still a small team and that's half a million dollars per year.
There are countries other than the US.
And?
And other countries have salaries lower than $100k/year for software devs.
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.
There is also weather and voice recognition services. If implemented with third party APIs those costs can add up.
They charged a subscription for those. If they lost money on that they have nobody to blame but themselves.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
I think we're talking about 500 updated apps here. You could've done it manually, didnt need a kubernetes cluster
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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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
This is what Rebble is doing right now.
The proposal as per the article by Pebble is for Rebble to keep hosting, and for Pebble to pay them to do that. Why would Pebble move things into a closed store when their openness last time is what allowed Rebble to scrape all the apps in the first place? Only Rebble has behaved like this.
- [deleted]
Developer time?
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.
Alternatively, I could say that Eric Migicovsky's track record is building a for-profit company that ultimately failed, and with the new company, he obviously, explicitly intends to prioritize selling new hardware. Whereas Rebble kept the lights on for devices that would otherwise have been bricks, as a collective of volunteer hackers.
Their missions conflict because Pebble2's potential customers largely overlap with Rebble's current users, but I would say their aims are quite different.
You could also say his track record is making things as open as possible so things like Rebble can spring up if necessary, but also in negotating deals that keep core services running for years after the purchase, and then after the purchaser's purchase.
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.
the OS is open sourced, so it's much less attached to Core Devices than the first go around
Could pebble2 launch with a minimal set of apps, asking the old Devs to push their binaries again? Sure, and with that in mind, all this deal with rebble does is save everyone time.
The way this reads, is a group of enthusiasts got together to create a lifeboat for people who wanted to keep their pebble devices alive... But are now building a moat around said life raft.
If they truly cared about the devices, the users, and the developers.. they would just drop this attitude and move forward.
Another interpretation is that for rebble the worst thing that could happen, was Eric coming back and restarting pebble.
Maybe they need a secret ‘Second Rebble’, hidden within Pebble, to take over if it collapses again.
It's open source now, so that's already taken care of.
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.
It's not just running it, they have built on top of it. Embrace, extend, extinguish is exactly what the Rebble team is afraid of. If extinguished and Core goes bust, the community would be left holding the bag yet again. Rebble doesn't want that, why would they.
Isn’t EEE exactly what Rebble is doing?
They embraced the the pebble community with a copy of the App Store, extended it with their own weather apis and the like, and then now are trying to extinguish any ability for Core to implement their own solution without paying them more.
No. Core can absolutely implement their own, just not on top of their work.
But they wouldn't be extinguished? Core is literally offering to pay them per user and the OS is open sourced... how could they be extinguished under the deal as outlined?
Core could easily say "actually we won't support Rebble at all it's too complicated to maintain this relationship"... and Rebble would then only exist as long as people are willing to maintain the now decade-old original watches... which is a difficult task given the availability of superior hardware from the original manufacturer.
With the Core deal they could actually grow and they get a significantly longer lease on life even if the hardware company fails again.
I've seen you make the comment about the OS being open-sourced a lot. But this largely has nothing to do with the OS. This is a conversation about infrastructure and data. The concern (from what I gathered and will condense greatly) is that Core will take in all the current app data and infrastructure setup, duplicate it themselves, move themselves off of Rebble, and continue developing on it privately.
Which to be absurdly clear - is exactly what Rebble did to Pebble. They scraped the apps and are now mad that someone else could do the same to them.
I don't think it's equivalent. When Rebble did what they did, it was because Pebble was going under and they had no EOL plan. Rebble took it upon themselves to carry the torch without having been passed it.
If Core were to do the same thing here, it's not the same, because Rebble is still active. You can't kill what's already dead (Pebble), but Rebble is very much still alive.
It is not. If Core wants, they can take the old Pebble dump and start building on top of it like Rebble has. All is fair.
So Rebble wants to benefit from code they didn't write (Pebble apps)... but also wants to prevent Pebble from benefiting from code Pebble didn't write (Rebble updates to Pebble apps)?
This seems a little silly, no? rent seeking behavior for maintaining code they didn't write to begin with?
The fact that Core is not willing to just start from the old dump publicly available already shows that it's not just "rent-seeking". Core clearly wants what Rebble has spent significant effort in not just maintaining but also building.
They're entitled to it just because in some sense Core is a successor to Pebble? No, not really.
Of course it's rent-seeking, akin to squatting — Rebble took Pebble apps developed at no cost to the users, and then maintained them and added cost. In some cases they might actually be required by the licenses of individual apps to open source their maintenance.
No one's actually entitled to anything here on either end (legally), I see 0 work being done to actually contact the original authors to seek permission or licensing details.
AFAIK, there wasn't a blanket license that covered all apps in the ecosystem... so each app would vary. In the absence of a license all rights are held by the original developers.
> Rebble took Pebble apps developed at no cost to the users, and then maintained them and added cost.
Again, if that's all it were, Core could and should just take that old Pebble dump and use that. Why bother Rebble if they haven't done anything as you imply.
Why would Core agree to pay Rebble a per user fee if they wanted to destroy them? they could just say "nope you get nothing"
And how would this prevent Rebble from continuing to operate in the event that Pebble failed again?
Open sourcing the OS makes continuity in the event of a failure much easier for Rebble right?
I've heard not so positive things about doing business with this dude. I'm not surprised by this toxicity around the product
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.
> 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.
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
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.
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.
> 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.
Being a non-profit can definitely just be high salaries and easier access to donations (because people stop thinking once they read "nonprofit").
> 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).
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
The list may be long, but most other categories are extremely narrow. There are very few into which Rebble could fit.
Looking over Michigan's Nonprofit Corporation Act it seems a Domestic Non-Profit Corporation would meet the IRS 501c3 requirements. The act even borrows definitions from IRS Publication 501.
It looks like Michigan Domestic Non-Profit Corporations cannot allow their proceeds to benefit private parties. So they are a nonprofit if that helps you pick a side. It seems like an asinine point to pivot on, though.
> It seems like an asinine point to pivot on, though.
Whether or not they are a nonprofit is not a point I care about on its own.
What is a point to pivot on, is if they claim to be a nonprofit, but make that claim in a misleading way.
It is highly unusual to be a 501c3-compatible state nonprofit but not actually bother to become a 501c3. You're essentially opting to pay federal taxes unnecessarily. It makes one wonder why.
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?
> 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.
> Why would they voluntarily give themselves federal tax exposure if they were able to avoid it?
Right. That wouldn't be particularly smart, even to someone who doesn't fully understand the ins and outs of tax/corporate law. Is it possible that perhaps they _do_ have their 501c3 designation and are just communicating it poorly?
Lack of positive confirmation that they are a 501c3 != positive confirmation that they are _not_ a 501c3
No, you misunderstand.
All 501c3 are publicly listed. They are not on the list. We have positive confirmation that they are not a 501c3, right now, nor have they ever been one.
The possibility suggested earlier was that they have applied but are not yet a 501c3. I lack positive confirmation that they have never attempted to become a 501c3.
Since it has been two years since they became a nonprofit, I think that implies they either have no intention of becoming a 501c3 or else tried to become one and failed because they did not meet the criteria. But technically it is possible that it is just delayed.
Ah, I see. I don't think I realized that 501c3 are publicly listed and that we do have positive confirmation that they aren't on that list. Thanks for clarifying.
>> 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.
> It seems what Core wants do here is take what Rebble build/maintained and drive Rebble into irrelevance.
Why do you think that Pebble wants to drive Rebble into irrelevance if they're keeping the app store and Pebble is paying them to do that?
> 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...
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.
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).
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.
- [deleted]
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?
> 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.
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.
There are a lot, but most of them are extremely narrowly defined. There are not many into which Rebble could fit.
Rust Foundation is pretty reputable and is a 501c6 and they say they're a non profit
Sure, Rust Foundation fits the criteria of a 501c6. It is not itself a commercial enterprise, but is an advocacy body for the Rust language and its users.
Rebble is not that. One of the key defining features of a 501c6 is that it exists to support other businesses that are associated, like a Chamber of Commerce. If Rebble did this then this whole issue we're commenting on the thread for wouldn't be an issue.
Also well funded. They would struggle to raise as much in terms of contributions IMO if not providing tax relief status to their contributors.
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.
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.
It could sell, it could enshittify. Trusting a founder seems daft in the year of our lord 2025.
It sold last time and ensured things kept running in the process.
Did it? Didnt PebbleOS have to be rescued by Googlers after they absorbed fitbit?
Does it? I'm more about trusting persons than ever. When the shareholders comes, thats when the enshitification process really starts. I also wish Tony Fadell would take over Nest again.
>Does it? I'm more about trusting persons than ever. When the shareholders comes, thats when the enshitification process really starts. I also wish Tony Fadell would take over Nest again.
Founders are the people who get money in exchange for taking the business public. The guy will be on his yacht when the shareholders arrive to screw things up.
You have a bias, I know plenty of people who are just content making a great product and don't sell out their customers. Maybe they don't get to be yacht-rich. But not everybody wants that. Maybe hard to imagine in these HN circles.
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?
There are also a bunch of cancelled order right now, so maybe they suddenly had a surplus of available devices...
Yeah. I bought a black duo out of nostalgia and wanting pebble to succeed, but not interested in the time and realized I don't love them enough to want to wear a white one. Fickle me, I guess.
Yeah, I wanted a black duo but find the white and time to be really ugly. OTOH I read someone saying that their duo came with really bad buttons, probably as a result of the parts laying in a warehouse for years, so maybe I dodged a bullet...
It seems like that's exactly the sot of agreement that was proposed and then fell through.
It is the HashiCorp fiasco all over again. HashiCorp thinks third-party is profiting from Terraform, they relicense, Terraform gets forked into OpenTofu.
Here, Rebble says Core is profiting from their work (hey, look at your licenses). It would be a direct violation of their ToS though, since there is this clause:
> 4. Services Usage Limits > > You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit any portion of the Service, use of the Service, access to the Service, or Content accessed through use of the Service, without Rebble’s express written permission.
So I don't know what to think honestly, I don't see any bad actors here...
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.
Exactly. The fact that Rebble is against trying to make Pebble completely open made me lose trust in them. I thought that was the whole point of Rebble.
> So what if they get bought by Fitbit or go closed source? Rebble will just be back to where they were before
How can they be back to where they are if it goes closed source ?
Reminds me of Genesi / Hyperion wars in late Amiga days.
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.
Thank you for all your work on this!
I know it's not your focus, but what's your take on the Core app frontend being closed source? I know libpebble3 is open and has the important bits, but it still feels bad to be unable to build an APK or grab that from F-Droid.
I had initially assumed it was because of some kind of dependency redistribution issue, but I think I read somewhere it was to stymie clones being developed and using the app. But that's part of an open ecosystem, no? That anyone can integrate into it?
Not firmware, but is there any chance Core would release the app as open source too? It's weird to have the library open, yet the app itself closed source, especially with how bare bones it is, it could be a nice gesture of good faith, show it's not about being "closed" for example
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.
There are solutions such as Answer Overflow[0] that allow public indexing and search of Discord content that solve this problem.
- [deleted]
I don't know if this addresses Rebble's concerns (which may involve more self-preservation), but as a customer, here's what I want:
If Core sells or otherwise goes bad, I want it to be impossible, legally or technically, for them to take functionality away. I want them bound by an agreement such that their hardware can load third-party versions of PebbleOS, the app can be replaced with other compatible apps, any web services can be swapped out without reverse engineering effort, and uploaded apps/watchfaces/etc are shared between backends so no party can attempt to create walled garden.
I think some of these are already addressed informally, but now that trust seems low I'd like to see something more formal. I do not want to see a world where Core pulls an Android and starts shipping a proprietary version of PebbleOS that apps start depending on a la Google Play Services. I do not want to see a world where Rebble or Core can restrict access to their app library. I also don't want to see a world where an overly restrictive deal means that Core can't ship on-device speech-to-text or weather services.
I realize the big issue that blocks this sort of app sharing is probably the existence of commercial/proprietary apps. If all the backends share apps freely, how could payments be handled? It's probably technically possible but very difficult. Personally I don't think this little hobby watch ecosystem would be made much poorer if it went the F-Droid route and required all apps be open and free. We're already relying on hobbyists for pretty much all apps and faces, and having the whole thing be open seems to fit the general hackable community-driven ethos Pebble is built on. Not having paid apps and IAPs would also dodge the temptation to go the modern Apple route of becoming a broker/services company.
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.
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.
I’m just curious, where has Rebble actually claimed ownership of your app binaries? I’d love to know if it’s something more concrete than “Eric said so.”
Not really relevant to the conversation, but:
I stumbled across your watchface recently and absolutely love it. It's remarkable how much information density you've achieved while still maintaining "at a glance" clarity. Thank you for the work you put into it!
Thank you!
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> 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.
> the only reason Rebble is getting away with it is that the watch face developers aren’t big outfits with lawyers.
I’m rather inclined to think that most watch face developers are happy that someone is keeping their watch faces up.
The amount of people that has a problem with it can be counted on one hand.
Core doesn not have any rights to it. Pebble did, and Pebble threw it away.
Rebble honors copyright by taking anything down that a rightsholder says to.
That's all copyright grants, and they are doing it. If you own an app and don't want Rebble to redistribute it, they won't.
Core has no claim to anything.
This is CoreTube coming along years later "Hey I used to work for Youtube. Give me your copy of all those videos other people actaully made and own, that Youtube threw away years ago. Also give me your whole NewTube back end site you wrote from scratch because I want to make CoreTube now and I don't have my old Youtube stuff any more because I sold it."
Like holy fucking are you kidding me?
You keep repeating that Core has no rights to that data, which is true, but it's a refutation to an argument no-one in this thread has made. What we're saying is that Rebble has no rights to that data either.
Rebble's theft of that data was 'allowed' in the same way that Nickelback allow those "look at this graph" memes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7aqZyRuP1Q): it's copyright infringement but they don't care so they don't enforce their rights. It's not like trademarks with its use-it-or-lose-it clause. What I'm claiming here is that people who made apps and watch faces for Pebble didn't care (assuming they knew at all) because it was for preservation purposes.
But now that Rebble is hoarding it to themselves, to the exclusion of Core, a revived Pebble company, those copyright holders may become less willing to tolerate the copyright infringement. And let's be clear: their rights do not begin and end with just getting it taken down.
What exactly are Rebble supposedly "hoarding to exclusion" again? The apps? https://github.com/aveao/PebbleArchive/tree/master/PebbleApp...
> And let's be clear: their rights do not begin and end with just getting it taken down.
Unless you want to claim lost profit on a free watch face, or try to make the argument that the watch face you didn’t even remember existed until now being hosted on their service caused you some form of emotional distress, maybe they do.
What? The original article and practically everyone in this thread has tried to make the argument that Core should have what they are asking for, which is the apps that they did not husband and everything else that they did not build.
If Core were just building their own new app store from scratch there would be no discussion. The only reason there is even any discussion at all is because they are not doing that, they are trying to take over Rebbles app store.
Rebble doesn't claim to own the apps. Rebble will even remove an app if you as the owner of an app tell them to. That means obviously they recognize who owns the apps, which is neither Rebble nor Core. Pebble might have had some claim once upon a time depending on how the terms for developers were written.
Rebble didn't steal anything. So, what theft are you talking about? The apps were broadcast on a public server for anyone to download so the download wasn't a theft.
They are redistributing those apps which they don't have any copyright to. But they are not selling the apps and they are respecting any authors directive to take an app down. They don't claim to have copyright except to their own new stuff.
Pebble aren't "hoarding" anything "to exclusion" except things that are actually theirs. And yes that includes their downloads of old apps. They don't own the IP of the app, they own the copy they downloaded. If someone else wants a copy, they can ask nicely and accept no for an answer. If you actually own an app you can tell Rebble to desist, and they will. What Core wants is just outside of any of those scopes.
Pebble voluntarily SOLD themselves. A former principle of Pebble has no tiniest right to anything at this point. They had rights, and they sold them for money. Now they have the money, not the apps, and for damned sure not the wholly new recreated services. They no longer have any claim to anything.
That's because you have incorrectly inferred from our statements saying that Core should get the data, or rather that the data should be publicly archived, as us saying that Core has a right to the data. You are again constructing a strawman to argue against.
EDIT: Also, if Rebble scraping it from Pebble isn't theft, then neither would Core scraping it from Rebble. Problem solved.
Only Pebble can make the claim that Rebble stole from Pebble, or that Pebble was materially damaged by it.
Rebble did not have any agreement with Pebble the way they did with Core.
> 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.
That is not at all how copyright works, like ... at all.
If it worked as you claim, I could host a copy of disney movies on my site till disney asks me to stop, and then i stop doing that and walk away free. Clearly this is not at all how that would go down. No matter who abandons what, how, or why, for at least 90(?) years after a work was created in USA, it cannot be distributed without permission. End of story.
If you were distributing my work, even if you stop when I ask, I can sue you and will win damages for every copy you distributed without permission. The damages would be multiplied by 3(?) if you were doing so knowingly (undeniable in this case)
Yeah that's not how copyright works.
Yes it is.
I mean you gave no specifics so by all means, pick any statement and say what's incorrect about it.
Are you confusing the DMCA safe harbor process with first party distribution of copyrighted material? I'm not an IP maximalist or anything but what you're saying is straightforwardly not the process for distribution of copyrighted material.
It is not actually the case that I can legally distribute whatever I like so long as I stop when asked. These are US orgs so assuming US law here.
Since you ask for specifics, this part is wrong:
> 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.
No. A rights holder can request that you pay for the distribution you already did. You'd then force litigation and it would cost the rights holder a lot for very little gain. Showing harm here would be hard so they don't do it but what you're saying is so far from correct it's unclear why you are insisting on specifics. It's not nuanced.
It is not wrong. All I said was that Rebble has demonstrated that they respect copyright. Taking down an app on request means you acknowledge that the person making the request has the right to do so.
It's true that a rightsholder could go further and sue for damages, and maybe even win. So what?
The last time that happened, was Rebble actually found guilty of operating in bad faith? Were the damages significant or trivial? Did Rebble try to deny the authors rights?
Unknown because it has never happened so it's immaterial. These imaginary possibles are possible but cannot be used as proof of Rebble behaving badly unless and until it actually happens and Rebble behaves badly or is found by a court to have been.
What we DO have is that when an app author asserts their copyright, Rebble complies.
I am not saying, and never did say that it's explicity legal to redistribute these apps without having first aquired the copyright from the authors.
>Rebble has demonstrated that they respect copyright.
Have they not been redistributing copyrighted material without a license to do so?
Immaterial. What business is that of Core's?
And if no copyright holder asserts their rights to Rebble, then you can't show any harm or bad faith operation by Rebble.
Put it this way, if handling the abandoned material is intrinsically wrong without a harmed party, then why can't you go accuse them of a crime right now and have the police deal with them like you could if you witnessed an act of violence or property damage?
Because it's not so cut and dried. A thing can be not explicitly legal and yet still not wrong or harmful. A thing can be undetermined until forced to be determined some how by some actual injured party with some actual right to claim that injury and the receipts to defend the claim.
So IF you are an app owner then you can assert your ownership and claim that Rebble infringed on you. Even if you can't prove that there was ever any monetary value, you might still be owed something just for punitive.
But Core is no such injured party.
And this blows my mind, after all this arguing, Core actually hass access to the apps free and clear all along. They are right there in a github free to clone.
All arguments based on the apps or access to a copy of the apps are right the fuck out the window. As they were all along anyway even if the apps were on a private server behind that no-scraping agreement.
Hmm okay. You have what I'd consider a fairly idiosyncratic meaning for what "respect copyright" means. All right, I suppose under that definition it is true.
You aren't allowed to distribute copyright works without permission just because the copyright holders haven't asked you to stop yet.
Publishing private correspondence with single board member(s) is super distasteful because the opinion of one member is not the opinion of the whole board. Sure, he got tacit agreement from one, but that's not agreement with the organization as a whole.
That's putting aside how gross it is for your personal comms to leak in public when you might be a little more candid about what's going on.
How can you trust someone who's willing to violate your privacy like that?
The whole drama is interesting as an outsider, but I can't be left without feeling that newPebble is trying to jump start a commercial venture via shortcuts.
Rebble was never going to change the world but they seemed to be very good at maintaining status quo + many small benefits and just reliably serving that.
The board falsely accused someone of a crime. The board members must take responsibility of that decision, which involves their interactions being evidence in claims of said crime. That responsibility is part of what it means to lead something.
It's a little gross it had come to that, but ugh. Sure rebble did good for the community, but that past tense is important. Now they're trying to do bad, and that cannot be justified. Accusations require a defense, so here we are.
The Pebble community is not and never was Rebble. I briefly used Cobble as an open source project, and used their app store mirror that they decided to host to download the same old apps and watch faces I used while Pebble lived, but I was not using a Rebble watch. The open source apps I want were never Rebble apps. No one expected Rebble to be anything than infrastructure life-support, but as no one thought the dream of new life in Pebble was never going to happen, it was the light we swarmed.
Now the life support task has ended with an appreciation for their efforts, and Rebble starts acting like a company running a smearing campaign trying and make up IP ownership and justification for royalties.
Rebble no longer represents any of the community, just a misguided and greedy board. What the community wanted now exists, so that is where we have gone.
I think the attitude here was "you've publicly accused me of impropriety, so here come the receipts". Specifically the accusations that he's not communicating with them (the messages prove he is).
You could argue the extent to which this was necessary but he's got to publicly defend himself against accusations ("Core Devices Keeps Stealing Our Work") that appear to be false.
> How can you trust someone who's willing to violate your privacy like that?
Who's to say he didn't have permission to post from his conversation partner? He doesn't need permission from the people he's talking about (just like we don't need his permission to post about him here).
Ouch. I think most people would assume he got permission, so this is a bit ugh
Thanks for providing this
wow, that puts a pretty different light on Eric's blogpost, at least for me. putting screenshots of private messages in a public blogpost without asking the person is SUCH a HUGE dickmove.
still happily waiting for my Core-Pebble to arrive, but i am getting so sick of people in general.
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.
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.
I never heard someone say bulk downloading and data extraction wasn't scraping if it used volatile storage.
I suppose I could describe my use of Hacker News as scraping but perhaps addiction is a better term.
When have you seen someone scrape data for volatile storage?
I've got several bots that scrape various places for transient information which isn't stored anywhere but merely transformed and then posted to the Fediverse and/or notified to my phone.
(I suppose you could argue that the information ending up in a post or notification is "non-volatile" storage but honestly? People will laugh at you.)
Price comparison. Alternative front ends.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pebble threw it away, Rebble did not, and Core is a newcomer whith no right to anything.
Core is making new, compatible hardware, at scale, not as a hobby.
We can buy that hardware from Core, today.
That gives them quite a few rights.
What? Absurd. It gives them the right to nothing at all. They can make an app store themselves any time they want.
Well... I have a watchface on the old store. It is non functional because external APIs changed. I just recently decided to update it, and there is now a much improved version in my github account.
I asked Rebble weeks (!!) ago to give me back access to my own account and binaries on their store and to this day, I heard nothing from them. Nada.
If Core start a new store, I will immediately put the new, much improved version of my old watch face on their store. Rebble can keep the old, non-functional one in their archive if they want.
Do you mean that you uploaded it to Pebble back in the day before Rebble? Have you gone through these steps? https://help.rebble.io/recover-developer-account/?viewall=tr...
Yes. I did all that. Sent the email (many times). Got no reply. Ever.
- [deleted]
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.
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.
> I wanted to highlight some of my favourite watchfaces on the Pebble Appstore.
It was for a commercial purpose. Not a personal one.
But to be clear, the agreement does allow him API access to view apps and display metadata. Presumably, to build App Store experiences on top of the data. Which could easily include something like stack ranking your favorite apps as a review system, or displaying favorites.
Saying this is scraping is so pedantic, and given that Eric’s company is paying for access to the API, they should kick rocks.
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.
I do not believe that's the proper definition of "scraping"
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)
I'm mostly happy with mine as a replacement.
But it is absolutely nowhere near as polished a user experience as Pebble was. I have had constant disconnects for months at a time with Gadgetbridge, loads of edge-case bug-like behavior that is in fact documented but in a weird location that nobody would look at or consider reasonable behavior, three hardware failures in three years (I'm still using one of them with a busted vibration motor), and on-device UX and tap accuracy and freezing that really only works out if you're sold on everything else about the device.
I haven't found anything else I'd recommend for a Pebble fan though, it really is the closest. I'm begrudgingly happy with it because I have no better alternative, not because it's an actually-good product.
Don't remove that little tape that prevents the watch from shocking you with 3 continuous volts of electricity!
I got mine from the Kickstarter, and it didn't came with the little tape. Those connectors are now corroded as f..
I have the BangleJs v2 and built a few small things for it. While I do like the hardware, only having one physical button kinda kills it for me. The software, community, and overall developer experience was pretty nice though.
I also tried Watchy, the eink, esp32 powered smartwatch. I got hardware v2 and I remember struggling a bit with firmware.
I had a Pebble back in the day and I'm currently wearing one from the new batch. It's the best combo of hardware and software in a smartwatch I've personally experienced.
BangleJS is fun but it's not all sunshine and rainbows:
* Hackable - Only using Chrome. I haven't discovered any other method but I'd love to be corrected on this.
* Totally touchscreen based and the touchscreen ain't that good.
* Screen might be visible but any Pebble, past or present, is way better
But it's still super fun.
You need to use the forked custom Gadgetbridge to make the most of it too.
Thanks for posting, I love getting gadgets with niche displays, a 3 bit color sun readable display, how peculiar!
This whole thing is presented a bit hyberbolically on both ends.
Rebble has valid concerns about the ecosystem surviving beyond Core. Their concerns about the closed-source parts of what Core has developed is valid (WRT the Core app frontend) and Eric positioning himself as a "benevolent dictator" is a reasonable red flag to raise. The next dictator (in case of acquisition) may not be so benevolent.
But while their stewardship of the app store and continuance of services is laudable, they can't really justifiably cry foul when someone "scrapes" their archive of mostly-scraped (from the original store) content.
Hopefully this teaches both sides that an open ecosystem means operating in the open. Which means making all source available not hiding vital components, and also not squawking about someone scraping the store.
The tone of the original post was inflammatory for sure. And there are certainly some things that could be said about Eric's post; he probably shouldn't have posted those messages out of context.
I'm not a Pebble user, so I don't know how the app install process works, but can't Core just create their own store from scratch, not based on the existing app catalogue, and have that coexist as an alternative option to Rebble? Then users who want access to that extensive back catalogue can use Rebble's store. Let developers and users pick the stores they want to publish to and download from, respectively.
Given that Core is a commercial enterprise, it doesn't seem appropriate for them to rely on apps that were scraped from the original Pebble store. Core is a separate commercial entity from the original Pebble, and doesn't inherit the relationships between original Pebble and the developers which published to their store. By creating a store from scratch, Core can reestablish each of those relationships one by one. That would go a long way towards helping Core build back whatever trust they may have lost (it seems some users are still bitter about the original closure of Pebble, and I don't blame them). Otherwise, what you have is a commercial entity profiting off of a bunch of applications for which they don't own the right to distribute.
As a developer myself, I might be ok with my app being archived due to an emergency situation... but having that app be republished by a commercial entity is a red line.
I don't have an ethical problem with the back catalogue existing, but it should be hosted by a non-profit. Core can position it's store as an place for new, or updated apps that are being actively maintained by developers, which is definitely a selling point. Rebble can position it's store as a back catalogue of apps that existed on the original pebble, offered on an as-is basis. Which is also a selling point, because who knows what great gems you might find in there...
This was my conclusion after reading both sides. It seems that Rebble is inevitably going to be an archive, while new development will be distributed on Core's store. Core temporarily needs some of its (unlicensed) catalog to bootstrap its new products.
Having the Core store populated with fresh development seems like good platform management anyway. Let the Rebble store be the 'classic apps' archive.
Ignoring all else, did private conversation participants consent to their messages being posted publicly in this post?
As someone else posted a link to the Reddit thread, I posted there to say, roughly, 'no, I'm pretty unhappy about it'.
I felt pretty uncomfortable reading those screenshots myself. Messages obviously sent in confidence.
It's a followup on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45960893 from a few hours ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded:
Core Devices keeps stealing our work - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45960893 - Nov 2025 (110 comments)
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?
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.
Not really.
If both sides don't trust each other, no amount license nor contract would suffice.
It would be a headache to prove the other side violate licenses.
In fact, they are already fighting on whether Eric was scraping data illegally or not, and people's opinions are divided. This would be an expensive lawsuit for both sides.
At the current level of trust, it's better not to do any business together at all.
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.
Yeah thats kinda bad.
Look, I am a bit of a hypocrite on this, I had a fun time when OpenAI dropped the musk emails.
But this is not a great look for pebble.
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).
It isn't really that complicated. Eric is an ass and that's how we ended up in this mess to begin with.
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.
> 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.
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. :(
On the other hand when you have the person Eric quoted saying this like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/1p0huk5/comment/npj...
It makes me incredibly suspicious of Eric's motivations for some of this, and makes me less inclined to trust him.
aren't they publicly accusing him of theft at this point though? trust is out once that happens
I have owned at least one of every Pebble watch since the beginning, have written watch faces for myself (but never posted them on the store), have received my Pebble 2 Duo, and am looking forward to receiving my Pebble Time 2. I am thrilled that Eric Migicovsky and his team are bringing the Pebble back to life. It was amazing that the Rebble team kept the watches alive all this time. But it's all open source, and doing that shouldn't give Rebble any kind of special say. There's no reason that "there has to be a future for Rebble in there" or that Rebble has to be "the core of the community." That sounds like nothing more than bruised egos.
Sounds like you're attempting to boost someones ego, nothing more.
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.
This would generally just discourage open software in general. Rebble is a non-profit and should not pretend to "own" any software or content. Eric didn't do things the polite way, but either way there's nothing to discuss here. Claiming that someone can steal something that is open source implies that they own said open source code / content. that's not how any of this works.
Reselling open source content is always going to be bad taste.
Trying to read all these threads and perspectives is truly exhausting but I lean more on the Rebble side. The idea that someone steps away for 10 years and then expects to take the work of others to use them and throw them away is tech toxicity 101.
I had owned two of the original pebbles, but I honestly think this looks bad on everyone and will gladly ignore every future article on either of these two groups.
That’s not at all what the threads seem to suggest, where the new company is literally paying Rebble for API access and trying very hard to include them in a lot of ways.
Reality is that after a decade+ with no hardware updates, there is really no future for the Rebble platform… without new hardware.
So you’re suggesting the people trying to actually revive the ecosystem by building new hardware shouldn’t be able to continue working on the open source OS they founded, or play around with clients for an API they pay for? Come on.
What an entirely avoidable lose-lose bust-up.
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.
New response from the maintainer of Rebble's developer docs:
My goodness, these people are fighting as if it were about controlling the next Apple App Store. These are just a few watch faces for a watch that only a few thousand people will ever use—how can they lose perspective like that?
some humans are just hungry for power and walled gardens, no matter if it's just power over one person sitting on a square meter patch of grass.
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
I'm glad I cancelled and refunded the three watches I ordered. I don't need another smartwatch from another dead company. I hope he can work this out.
> 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.
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.
The tao of open source: never invest time/money/effort you aren't comfortable giving away, other people using, and someone else forking perhaps as a commercial offering.
There are undoubtedly those preach GPL 3 and AGPL zealous control freakery but it's pretending to be "free" while dictating what can and can't be done with code. If the agreement attempts to discriminate against users selectively, it ain't free or open. GPL 2 is the line in the sand.
You confuse open source with free software, and all the shades of it.
GPL/copyleft exist because some people make products because they want to help and improve a community. Not just to let the product go in the wind, "whatever happens to it" (meaning corporations using it for profit extraction and/or the exact opposite goals). Even if AI made this less defendable by legal means.
This isn't because these people are "control freaks", but because of their beliefs and purposefully chosen legal framework.
I have no bone in either pebble or rebble discussion. All I want to know is what is eric's website made with? I love the font and the whole setup and would love to copy it for another blog I will setup and never write anything on.
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.
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.
Yep. I'm sure glad I'm not a current or aspiring Pebble owner..
All I can say is I am very happy with my brand new Pebble. Thank you Eric and your team for providing new hardware. This is awesome! Thank you Rebble, for maintaining the legacy software.
mommie, daddie, i just got my watch please don't fight ... :*(
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think the main sticking point is this:
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.‘We’re happy to let them build whatever they want as long as it doesn’t hurt Rebble’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.
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.
But they don’t have any rights to that data. They don’t own redistribution rights for the apps.
Yeah, that's my feeling too - which is why I'm not even sure Rebble can legally distribute these to Pebble if they wanted.
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.
Makes sense. They don't want to be EEE'd. Well, unfortunate, but this seems like a trust breakdown.
> Rebble is left with less than they started with.
Is data removed from their server when somebody else copies it? That's a new computing paradigm in that case.
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?
bit of a narrow focus point isn't it? this is a project that lives on despite the economics, throwing garden-wall-lingo in there feels a bit gross tbh
Rebble’s moat is the content from pre 2018 that they are illegally redistributing.
Now I am glad I didn't order a new one. Drama everywhere nowadays.
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.
There is drama for Watchy, but I don't think there is any for BangleJS (other than being a bit iffy on iphones)
What's the drama with Watchy? I wasn't aware of any but I didn't play with mine that much either.
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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.
> 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.
No but in this specific case which for me is merely a toy I can easily decide not to engage with it.
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.
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AI slop comment.
Why would we trust Eric, he's a for profit goon.
The reason why I pre-ordered a Time 2 for a money you can easily get better hardware and software for was the naive implication there is hardware meant to be hacked and community around that hardware with freedom in mind I want to be part of.
The reason why I cancel my pre-order now is I a clear (to me) sign that we have a "it's only software, I'm building the the important part here" situation -the same reason why I won't by a boox product until they change their mind.
The moment I'll come back will be the one when a significant part of the money you spend on a Pebble will automatically go into the software ecosystem (which makes Pebble for $200+ interesting in the first place) and it's easy to see how this money is spent.
I'm also 'scraping' content for my personal projects when I just need the data, but Eric is building a business here, and there had been a valid and clearly communicated suspicion about Eric acting like "goodbye fools, and thanks for the fish". And he agreed not to do so and he lied. How can I know I'm not buying $225 brick supported only by a single person who ditched the community?
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.
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.
I think most of the battery life improvement is the much more power-efficient SOCs available. The original Pebble used an STM32 processor and a TI Bluetooth chip, where nowadays having BLE integrated into the SOC is table stakes.
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.
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