7 ms·

Core Devices keeps stealing our work

608 points by jdauriemma 11mo ago

julianlam 11mo ago
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Fairly certain the Rebble folk know the answer they'll get from their users. I'm certain the EFF would probably be very interested in pursuing this.
- deleted 11mo ago
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- latentsea 11mo ago
  > Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Unrelated but this always reminds me of the Bushism "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice... can't get fooled again!".
danpalmer 11mo ago
Not cool. I can't help but think this must be pretty self-defeating. The market for the Pebble watches is not general consumers who will never see things like this going on in the background, it's relatively technical people who know a lot about the devices they are using, almost by definition. I can only assume that this will be widely known quickly in the customer base. There may be another side to this story, but it's so far not a good look for Pebble/Core, and this post is well reasoned and written enough that I doubt there are many places for alternate explanations to hide.
- danpalmer 11mo ago
  I can't edit this comment anymore, but I think there is another side to this that is worth hearing. I stand by my point that openness is likely core to the Pebble customer base, but it's less clear to me now that Rebble are living up to that.
ycombinatrix 11mo ago
>Core took Rebble’s work, added to it, and then paid us back by putting a more restrictive license on their contributions and wrapping a closed-source UI around it. Is that legal?
- hobs 11mo ago
  I didn't see a mention of which license, and I am too lazy to check, but depending on the open source license the answer is either Yes!, Yes, or Nobody really can do anything about it most of the time(unless you are willing to sue them).
  - TheDong 11mo ago
    > I am too lazy to check Literally linked in the article at exactly the words in the quote you're replying to. They link to this as their proof: https://github.com/coredevices/libpebble3/commit/35853d45cd0ec51cb732be866f6f72467653a613 https://github.com/coredevices/libpebble3/commit/35853d45cd0... Yes, this is an attempt to nerd-snipe you into giving a marginally more informed opinion, while also shame you for being too lazy to click a single link, but not too lazy to type an entire comment.
    - hobs 11mo ago
      lol didn't mean to come off rude, I just skimmed it and missed it I guess - so the answer in this case is generally no you cannot relicense agpl 3.0 without being an original copyright holder and getting sign offs from all the other holders. Also generally agpl 3.0 is considered a viral license, so accessing it over a network is considered a form of distribution (which is probably why they dont like it) but relicensing it is just a core "nope" type of thing. (also dual licensing seems like you're relicensing effectively if the purchaser doesn't have to respect the gpl license, but not as clear to me)
- TheDong 11mo ago
  I'm not a lawyer, but looks totally fine to me. If you look at the link they have for proof, the change was GPLv3 to a dual-license AGPLv3 + not-really-specified license you can privately arrange. They have to respect the original GPLv3 license, which means that Core has to continue to publish all libpebble3 changes under a GPLv3 compatible license, and they do appear to be doing so, even if they also offer a separate license for sale. I feel like rebble is phrasing this a little misleadingly too. The neutral phrasing here would be "Pebble forked our work, and per our GPL license is continuing to make all their changes available to all users for free. If you contribute to their repo, not ours, they now require a CLA, and for code they write you can also pay them for a difference license (though it's always also available for free under the GPL)" There may be something that's real here, but "forked our library and added a CLA" feels normal and expected, not worth hostile phrasing.
rideontime 11mo ago
Pretty damning. There goes any interest I had in the Pebble revival until this is sorted fairly.
Adam2025 11mo ago
If that’s true, it’s disappointing to see community efforts reused without credit. Open projects rely on transparency and respect for contributors, so some clarification from both sides would help clear this up.
cyberax 11mo ago
I'm now considering canceling my pre-order. I want the Pebble ecosystem to succeed, but I won't buy another closed-source device.
amatecha 11mo ago
Wow. > We made it absolutely clear to Eric that scraping for commercial purposes was not an authorized use of the Rebble Web Services. > We’d already agreed to give Core a license to our database to build a recommendation engine on. Then, Eric said that he instead demanded that we give them all of the data that we’ve curated, unrestricted, for him to do whatever he’d like with. We asked to have a conversation last week; he said that was busy and could meet the following week. Instead, the same day, our logs show that he went and scraped our servers. Seriously uncool. I don't really consider myself a part of the Pebble community anymore (despite having two of the OG Pebble) but I'd def lean towards getting legal input on this...
deleted 11mo ago
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gregbot 11mo ago
What is this data that Core wants exactly? Are old pebble apps compatible with the new devices? Edit: under what license did rebble scrape the app code? Couldn’t Core Devices scrape it from rebble under the same logic?
- markn951 11mo ago
  Yes
- Liquix 11mo ago
  > ...Pebble Technology Corporation, went out of business and dropped support for the hundreds of thousands of Pebble smartwatches out there. Rebble – and our community! – put together a Herculean effort to salvage the data that was left on the Pebble app store. > We’ve built a totally new dev portal, where y’all submitted brand new apps that never existed while Pebble was around. > 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! it sounds like Rebble scraped the original store, built a new API and storage layer, facilitated the publishing of new apps, and kept old apps updated when external changes would've rendered them otherwise unusable. then tried to work with Eric to reach an agreement where both parties could have a piece of the pie in the relaunch.
- mikepurvis 11mo ago
  I'm pretty sure everything on the Rebble store today is free, but I think the real fight here is about who gets to own the default (only?) storefront that then has the option to offer paid apps/faces... and collect a whatever-percent cut of that forever.
synapsomorphy 11mo ago
Assuming Eric / Core doesn't come out with some scathing "real story": Well, it's better to figure this out today (that Eric / Core are not so great) rather than a year or two down the line when I'd have already bought a new Pebble. Still sucks, I was excited. Never had one but I want something in the same niche. Does anyone have suggestions for other good low-capability, long battery, hackable eink watches?
- bcraven 11mo ago
  >Does anyone have suggestions for other good low-capability, long battery, hackable eink watches? We've been looking for these for years, and never found them. Pebble coming back was the solution that we all dreamed about.
- Zetaphor 11mo ago
  Former Rebble dev here, I've been very happy with the BangleJS. It doesn't meet all of your criteria but the battery lasts me a week and it's more hackable than Pebble ever was.
- yehoshuapw 11mo ago
  not eink, but have a look at pinetime
- mhitza 11mo ago
  If you're not looking for a smartwatch, but a hackable digital watch check out sensorwatch.net or other mods that may exist for the Casio F-91W
- preisschild 11mo ago
  > low-capability, long battery, hackable eink watches? Gadgetbridge works pretty well with Amazfit smart watches, although they are OLED, not eink. Batteries last more than 1 week. https://gadgetbridge.org/ https://gadgetbridge.org/
- throwaway290 11mo ago
  Garmin instinct? as I remember eink and almost month of battery life
modeless 11mo ago
I used Rebble for many years and bought the new Core Devices watches. The truth is Rebble will die without new hardware. It was declining in usage and I myself stopped using it when my old Pebble hardware gave out, until the prospect of new hardware came around. There needs to be a business making money to build the hardware to support this community. I appreciate that Rebble kept the flame alive, but I support Eric and Core Devices in building a business that makes enough money to fund new development of both hardware and software.
- girvo 11mo ago
  And the hardware is useless without the software... its a smartwatch ecosystem, they need each other, and Core screwing over Rebble is not OK (if it is true)
  - modeless 11mo ago
    Only a small part of the software in use here was written by Rebble. They cloned the Pebble app store originally, but the store has no value by itself. What makes it valuable is the catalog of watchfaces and apps, approximately none of which were built by Rebble. They were originally scraped by Rebble from Pebble, which makes the accusation of scraping here ironic. The software on the watch itself is mostly Pebble software with mostly Core Devices modifications. The phone app was written mostly by Core Devices. By Rebble's own admission using Rebble code only saved Core Devices "a month or two of engineering effort". And the "more restrictive license" they're accused of adding is AGPL, still aggressively open source. It's also strange to me that the Bluetooth commit they point to before claiming "Rebble paid for the work" was actually written by Liam McLoughlin, a Google and former Fitbit and Pebble engineer. Was Rebble paying a Google engineer?
    - deleted 11mo ago
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    - shkkmo 11mo ago
      > They were originally scraped by Rebble from Pebble, which makes the accusation of scraping here ironic. Scraping data because the original publisher is going under to prevent the data from being lost is very different from scraping data from someone who you are actively trying negotiate with over use of that data. > It's also strange to me that the Bluetooth commit they point to before claiming "Rebble paid for the work" was actually written by Liam McLoughlin, a Google and former Fitbit engineer. Was Rebble paying a Google engineer? The claim was that Rebble paid the developers of NimBLE, Codecoup, to assist with integration of NimBLE into RebbleOS
syntaxing 11mo ago
I wonder if there is a third option. Partner with someone like Pine64 and release your own watches. I find it hard to believe that the market is that big to begin with. If you have a small batch that can attract the tinkers and engineers like us, it’ll be a self fulfilling cycle. More users, more contributors, more income.
- solarkraft 11mo ago
  Rebble did have a hardware project when I looked into the community, but I think they lacked the resources to get very far with it. A bummer in my opinion because they probably have the understanding of what makes a good smartwatch that most of the industry seems to lack.
zeroCalories 11mo ago
Wow. Yielding to a benevolent dictator requires a lot of trust, and it seems Eric is doing his best to exhaust any he might have had. Want to hear more from those involved, but seriously considering cancelling my order.
cproctor 11mo ago
I'm new to Pebble and have been excited about joining the community; I have a Pebble Time 2 on preorder. I will certainly cancel the pre-order unless Rebble affirmatively says they are satisfied with the arrangement.
- mikepurvis 11mo ago
  I'm in the exact same position. It's beyond belief that the new (hardware) company wouldn't see itself in long-term collaboration with the community organization (providing services/platform). Indeed, it bodes rather poorly for the sustainability of Core if they're already behaving like owning everything is critical to satisfying some hypergrowth checkbox. I kind of thought the whole point of the new organization was not to be another startup and to rather to be more like a scaled cottage industry player, making a niche product for nerds and selling it directly to them for a reasonable upfront profit margin rather than depending on collecting rent from a closed app ecosystem to pay the bills.
charcircuit 11mo ago
The author sounds like a pushover who can't stand up for themselves.
- super256 11mo ago
  The author sounds exactly like I expect a non-profit director to be asking the community of their opinion. I wish Wikimedia would act like this. I find the author's behavior excellent.
- g-b-r 11mo ago
  The author of the Rebble post?
girvo 11mo ago
Oh... oh no :( I was really looking forward to my pre-ordered Time 2, as a Pebble Steel then Time Round owner. But you cannot do this to Rebble. You just can't, this is unacceptable. Cancelling my preorder :(
shrinks99 11mo ago
What a bummer. It seems like what they're asking for here (a written agreement that users will be able to access 3rd party app stores) would be a win win win for Core Devices, Rebble, and users. Core Devices gets to look like a super good guy (ideally driving interest in the product), Rebble gets to look like a huge winner maintaining something for the community (as they are), and users get an open ecosystem. There's still a chance for a win here, but looks like the door is closing.
Vexs 11mo ago
I don't think _anyone_ who's buying the new pebble watches is to some degree not interested in software, and probably pretty interested in open-source community work. It's a wildly niche userbase, and this sort of thing is going to put crazy pressure on Eric and co, I imagine. Still keeping my preorder, but damn dude this kinda sucks.
abhorrence 11mo ago
I'm torn here. I love that Rebble folks have kept things alive. I also love that Eric underwent the effort to make new hardware. I'm also a bit sad that this is the first we're hearing of this tension, because it likely would've changed my decision to purchase a new Core 2 Duo watch, and I would've preferred this sort of falling out happen before a lot of devices have been purchased.
- cut3 11mo ago
  Can you cancel the preorder? Or is the device you mentioned already out and too old to return? Some credit cards will refund you if terms changed after a purchase as well.
m463 11mo ago
Looks like it went from Apache license to dual AGPLv3 and commercial. I think apache is fine for commercial use. It seems to me the terms of the apache license weren't followed? In there it says to include the apache license file, not throw it away. (I am not a lawyer) AGPLv3 seems decent - if you run it on a server, the users of that server can get the software I think.
Klaus23 11mo ago
Once again, we have the situation where someone uses an Apache or BSD licence, only to then wonder why others do exactly what the licence allows. If you want others, especially companies, to play nice, you have to make them do so. Use GPL or AGPL. Let's hope Rebble doesn't get steamrollered. They did good work when the original company failed its users.
monster_truck 11mo ago
I've always considered these people to be scam artists after they promised sapphire crystal faces in the original kickstarter and then shipped cheap garbage.
- RandomBacon 11mo ago
  I wasn't there for the original Pebble, but was that a stretch goal, or the promised specs no matter how many sold? I can understand them not fulfilling a stretch goal even though that's kind of crappy. If it was a promised spec for every watch no matter what, then that is not cool.
- Dylan16807 11mo ago
  Are you sure? I can't find a single mention of this anywhere. And that would have been an extremely aggressive move unrelated to the main point of the watch.
sgentle 11mo ago
Getting strong The Scorpion and the Frog vibes from this situation. Unfortunately, this is just the nature of a profit-maximising entity. Profit is the gap between how much it can take and how little it can give. It concedes nothing without a demand. Why would it? The playbook isn't exactly a secret. What you might describe as a "classic walled garden enshittification trap", Peter Thiel and Sam Altman would describe as "monopoly (affectionate)": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REKbaA6USy4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REKbaA6USy4 – "proprietary technology, network effects, economies of scale", exactly by the book. I think the bias towards optimism is commendable but I hope this is the wake-up call the community needs to treat "your love is valuable enough to build a business around" as the Faustian bargain it is and keep Core Devices on a short leash. They want to own you, not work with you. It's their nature.
doctorpangloss 11mo ago
eric, you make aesthetic experiences. you're not endeavoring to make a giant company, you're making the doughnut shop (https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/georges-donuts-hims-trump-donation-20049321.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/georges...). nobody needs a watch. don't be greedy.
- gregbot 11mo ago
  It really doesn’t make any sense for the central software repository of a new product to be controlled by an independent third party. I would have a lot of concerns about that if i were a user of these new pebbles
  - deleted 11mo ago
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  - doix 11mo ago
    The 3rd party has continued to exist when the first party support died the first time. It's the exact opposite, you don't want to buy a device that is tied to some 1st party service. The service can go down and you're stuck with a brick.
  - a2128 11mo ago
    It doesn't make sense in isolation, but the first party failed to do this work for the past 10 years and then wants to benefit from a third party who did do the work. Either the third party should get a seat at the table, or they should start fresh with an empty first party store
throwaway38294 11mo ago
Bummer. I preordered a Time 2 but I'll just cancel if the company is going to screw over the community that kept them alive.
mmastrac 11mo ago
The move from LGPL to Apache/MIT as the default license only _really_ benefit business. There was a lot of FUD against LGPL that was probably driven by the fact that businesses wanted to slurp up open-source libraries and bundle them into valuable bits of tech without having to contribute back or compensate the library authors.
rf15 11mo ago
What a mess. Eric, I think you will have some explaining and negotiating to do. You might feel like you don't have the time, but this could soon turn existential for your project. For now I keep my order up, I'm sure there's a way for both of you to reach an agreement that doesn't devalue one or the other party. For those immediately jumping ship: have some patience and observe. You heard one side of the story that yes, someone was frustrated enough to drag all of this public, but that cannot possibly tell the whole story. Please stop escalating the problem by throwing it all away and instead seek to reach out and steer this around instead.
- Aeolun 11mo ago
  I dunno how you can represent this any other way. The Rebble people more or less say they did nothing but give stuff away and want to talk. Eric/Core seem to be taking and taking, and giving nothing back.
  - nar001 11mo ago
    For what it's worth he IS contributing to libpebble3 at least, but yes most of it is closed I do get the idea, he wants to build hardware and thus needs to be able to do whatever he wants to the code and not wait for merges but it sucks he seems to probably take it too far, for example not using the Rebble mobile app and instead making his own around the library, that's also closed source
    - Aeolun 11mo ago
      I mean, it’s not that I necessarily blame him for taking stuff that is open source, but giving the impression that you will not sideline the others entirely and then doing so anyway feels icky. I wouldn’t want to deal with a random open source project while running a company either, but I wouldn’t try to pretend to either, I hope.
  - consp 11mo ago
    That's modern capitalism for you. Sad to see, if there is not proper response in the next few days it's cancel time.
mvanveen 11mo ago
Has the Rebble community ever explored their own open source HW for the rebble ecosystem? I know there’s a ton of work involved to get something high quality/consumer grade and there’s obviously cost implications correlated to order volume and we were all hoping Core Devices would offer the goods but maybe we can lean into a community driven model for the hardware as well?
- davidzweig 11mo ago
  I'd be surprised if more 'hackable' watches didn't pop up around the Sifli chips. Lilygo have an upcoming device with Sifli 52 chip. There's the SF32LB52-ULP smartwatch development board.
  - mvanveen 11mo ago
    The Silfi 52 chip is news to me- thanks for pointing it out (also didn't know it's what is powering the new Core Devices products- pretty cool). I've built custom firmware for a DIY OLED ESP-32 watch that is made by a few vendors before. In some ways we're emerging into that reality now but I'd admit that what Core Devices is trying to do and the general level of polish of the Pebble ecosystem is a lot further than something like what I'm describing.
chucklenorris 11mo ago
Block access to your servers and offer firmware for their watches with access to your servers. Most people who use these watches are nerdy enough to dislike this behavior and able to flash a new firmware.
deleted 11mo ago
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jdenning 11mo ago
I'm not shocked - Pebble showed their true colors years ago when they ran the kickstarter campaign for the Time 2, which they cancelled and sold out to Fitbit. They never cared about their community. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getpebble/pebble-2-time-2-and-core-an-entirely-new-3g-ultra/posts/1752929 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getpebble/pebble-2-time...
- danpalmer 11mo ago
  Is that really an example of not caring about the community? The business failed, and they refunded everyone who had pledged. The sale to Fitbit was probably the way they funded those refunds. That seems like an unfortunate ending but one that indicated some amount of care for the community.
  - jdenning 11mo ago
    The timeline of the campaign makes it pretty clear that either: 1) they knew they were insolvent, and wouldn’t be able to continue or 2) the campaign was used to demonstrate market demand to enable their sale to Fitbit Edit: also, they sold for $23 million [1], total pledges were for about $13 million, and not everyone got a refund [2] [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/fitbit-bought-pebble-for-23-million-2017-2?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/fitbit-bought-pebble-for-23-... [2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getpebble/pebble-2-time-2-and-core-an-entirely-new-3g-ultra/comments https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getpebble/pebble-2-time...
- AshamedCaptain 11mo ago
  Shouldn't come as a surprise for anyone that followed them since the Allerta days.
ehead 11mo ago
It sounds like theres room for a deal here; multiple app stores are very trendy right now :) My preorder is definitely on the line if this doesn't get fixed.
lrvick 11mo ago
I am the primary author of the current generation Pebble Appstore frontend, the one that maintained the database most of the time, the guy who ran the security, infrastructure, data privacy team, and quite a few things around the Pebble ecosystem over the years. I also was on the team that begrudgingly had to hand it all over to Fitbit in the acquisition. I have a very strong opinion here. Any development of Pebble as an ecosystem that is not 100% free open source software and available to the public, is a dick move at this point. It is a dick move if Eric does it in any way, and it is a dick move if the Rebble team does it in any way. Let Eric or anyone else scrape what they want with the Appstore and wish them luck. Maybe even make a nice JSON export button for people, why not? Meanwhile those in the community should keep doing what they have always done: Work towards fully open source community first solutions with the full blessing and support of said community. Proprietary solutions are always a dead end so do not waste any energy fighting them or thinking about them. Just keep pushing to public repos.
- arthurcolle 11mo ago
  If you had sudo permissions on the situation what 10 steps would you want to see happen to resolve this whole affair?
  - lrvick 11mo ago
    1. All: Put an FOSS license file in every single repo involved and make it public 2. Rebble: Make every database be easy to export as JSON or similar 3. All: Let everyone do what they want 4. Core Devices: Make it easy for devices to point at Core Devices or Rebble services and firmware updates as they like Could not come up with 6 more steps. Fighting those with (perceived or real) intention to profit from community work is a waste of energy that can be better spent serving that community. Best to focus on making people want to run the open source alternatives over any proprietary first party solutions that may or may not emerge.
    - deleted 11mo ago
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EspadaV9 11mo ago
Like many others here, I was excited to hear pebble return, and have a Time 2 on preorder, but will be cancelling it if I don't hear a positive outcome from this.
lanyard-textile 11mo ago
This is not good. > We’ll compromise on almost everything else, but our one red line is this: Whatever we agree on, there has to be a future for Rebble in there. I can see through to the good intentions, but this mindset has a very dangerous sandbagging risk to the other party. Could you imagine a company forcing you to exclusively use them and only them as a vendor for the foreseeable future? Not just for a single contract, but for many contracts beyond it? Or one especially long contract? That’s just not fair. There are some other red flags here too. I am not convinced they have the ability to license a database they themselves scraped, nor if there’s any obligation to merge the particular code changes if any back upstream.
- rkangel 11mo ago
  That's not what they're demanding (or at least, that's only one way of giving them what they're demanding). A legal guarantee that they'll allow people to configure their watches for an alternate app store would probably be sufficient, for instance.
  - lanyard-textile 11mo ago
    I agree, I think that’s the intended interpretation — but I’m disappointed that’s not their stated redline then, though. The ask there is for a future in app stores beyond Core Devices, not just for Rebble specifically. That is a call for Core to open their platform; what they have now is a call for Core to open their platform to them.
xyzzy_plugh 11mo ago
I read the whole post and all the links. Rebble's work is, as far as I can tell, entirely open source. The contents of the database are not, but those contents are predominantly a curation of other people's work, most of which is open source, along with some stats. I'm having a hard time buying into this argument that any theft is actually occurring. Rebble can keep on doing their thing if they want. Core is free to use their open source (and relicense! but obviously they can't retroactively relicense the prior work, nor can they change the license in Rebble's repos). To be perfectly honest this reads to me like the pot calling the kettle black. The fact that any of this even exists -- Rebble, Core, the firmware OSS, the Pebble name again -- feels miraculous. More litigious lawyers could have squashed these things at numerous points. I feel sorry for the Rebble folks that they feel they're getting the short end of all of this. But that's the beauty of it all, of Open Source. I do hope that Core and Rebble can find a way to be more harmonious moving forward. And I hope everything continues to be Open Source.
eurg 11mo ago
Unfortunate. I'll wait some days for the response, but it better be a good one. This behavior from Core may be par for the course, but I can already buy watches from companies that have values only for marketing. It's a small niche, and being nice would not cost much. And they already died once, without having a proper off-ramp for their users - for now I don't trust them to exist in another two years. (I'm not really sure they even are in this for the long term - talk is cheap.)
- eurg 11mo ago
  So, the response is here. Without a closer look I can't say what's really going on - although I lean toward believing that Core is going in the right direction - but there still seem to be some orange flags.
solarkraft 11mo ago
The behavior of the Pebble company has not sat right with me since I discovered the following things way back when: - You can’t directly access the microphone audio - They don’t sell replacement parts A bad look for a “hacker watch” and apparently not a fluke. Oh, and they just dropped all of their users when they sold themselves to Fitbit. Rebble have demonstrated great stewardship of the ecosystem, Eric has not. My trust is with Rebble. That said: It was Core Devices who made my watch work again on iOS, the Rebble project for this never materialized.
awoimbee 11mo ago
That's why the GPL license was created.
AJRF 11mo ago
Very uncool of Eric! Thank you for the work you've put in over the years.
Havoc 11mo ago
This gives me Highschool „I can change him“ energy. Negotiation and compromise has its place but if someone negotiates by only taking you bail
chamik 11mo ago
That's a bummer. I have a time 2 pre-ordered and was looking forward to using it. So far no response from Eric. If it won't be a good one, I'll cancel the preorder.
- dzogchen 11mo ago
  Same here, I’ll cancel this week if there is no satisfactory response.
Anonbrit 11mo ago
That's my orders (2 watches) cancelled. I don't see Core Devices doing anything good unless it appears to be affecting their bottom line, so I'm voting with my wallet. If things get sorted, I can order again
imtringued 11mo ago
Keeps stealing? Are you sure you aren't winning already? Imagine if all they did was clone your repo and change nothing. That would be maximum theft and yet I somehow doubt that this would have made the rebble guys unhappy.
summermusic 11mo ago
I already received my Pebble 2 Duo and it's been such a joy to own, but I will definitely be canceling my Pebble Time 2 preorder if Eric keeps acting like this.
dang 11mo ago
Response thread: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45969250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45969250

608 points by jdauriemma 11mo ago

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Fairly certain the Rebble folk know the answer they'll get from their users. I'm certain the EFF would probably be very interested in pursuing this.

deleted 11mo ago
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latentsea 11mo ago
> Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Unrelated but this always reminds me of the Bushism "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice... can't get fooled again!".

danpalmer 11mo ago

Not cool. I can't help but think this must be pretty self-defeating. The market for the Pebble watches is not general consumers who will never see things like this going on in the background, it's relatively technical people who know a lot about the devices they are using, almost by definition. I can only assume that this will be widely known quickly in the customer base. There may be another side to this story, but it's so far not a good look for Pebble/Core, and this post is well reasoned and written enough that I doubt there are many places for alternate explanations to hide.

danpalmer 11mo ago
I can't edit this comment anymore, but I think there is another side to this that is worth hearing. I stand by my point that openness is likely core to the Pebble customer base, but it's less clear to me now that Rebble are living up to that.

ycombinatrix 11mo ago

>Core took Rebble’s work, added to it, and then paid us back by putting a more restrictive license on their contributions and wrapping a closed-source UI around it. Is that legal?

hobs 11mo ago
I didn't see a mention of which license, and I am too lazy to check, but depending on the open source license the answer is either Yes!, Yes, or Nobody really can do anything about it most of the time(unless you are willing to sue them).
- TheDong 11mo ago
  > I am too lazy to check Literally linked in the article at exactly the words in the quote you're replying to. They link to this as their proof: https://github.com/coredevices/libpebble3/commit/35853d45cd0ec51cb732be866f6f72467653a613 https://github.com/coredevices/libpebble3/commit/35853d45cd0... Yes, this is an attempt to nerd-snipe you into giving a marginally more informed opinion, while also shame you for being too lazy to click a single link, but not too lazy to type an entire comment.
  - hobs 11mo ago
    lol didn't mean to come off rude, I just skimmed it and missed it I guess - so the answer in this case is generally no you cannot relicense agpl 3.0 without being an original copyright holder and getting sign offs from all the other holders. Also generally agpl 3.0 is considered a viral license, so accessing it over a network is considered a form of distribution (which is probably why they dont like it) but relicensing it is just a core "nope" type of thing. (also dual licensing seems like you're relicensing effectively if the purchaser doesn't have to respect the gpl license, but not as clear to me)
TheDong 11mo ago
I'm not a lawyer, but looks totally fine to me. If you look at the link they have for proof, the change was GPLv3 to a dual-license AGPLv3 + not-really-specified license you can privately arrange. They have to respect the original GPLv3 license, which means that Core has to continue to publish all libpebble3 changes under a GPLv3 compatible license, and they do appear to be doing so, even if they also offer a separate license for sale. I feel like rebble is phrasing this a little misleadingly too. The neutral phrasing here would be "Pebble forked our work, and per our GPL license is continuing to make all their changes available to all users for free. If you contribute to their repo, not ours, they now require a CLA, and for code they write you can also pay them for a difference license (though it's always also available for free under the GPL)" There may be something that's real here, but "forked our library and added a CLA" feels normal and expected, not worth hostile phrasing.

rideontime 11mo ago

Pretty damning. There goes any interest I had in the Pebble revival until this is sorted fairly.

Adam2025 11mo ago

If that’s true, it’s disappointing to see community efforts reused without credit. Open projects rely on transparency and respect for contributors, so some clarification from both sides would help clear this up.

cyberax 11mo ago

I'm now considering canceling my pre-order. I want the Pebble ecosystem to succeed, but I won't buy another closed-source device.

amatecha 11mo ago

Wow. > We made it absolutely clear to Eric that scraping for commercial purposes was not an authorized use of the Rebble Web Services. > We’d already agreed to give Core a license to our database to build a recommendation engine on. Then, Eric said that he instead demanded that we give them all of the data that we’ve curated, unrestricted, for him to do whatever he’d like with. We asked to have a conversation last week; he said that was busy and could meet the following week. Instead, the same day, our logs show that he went and scraped our servers. Seriously uncool. I don't really consider myself a part of the Pebble community anymore (despite having two of the OG Pebble) but I'd def lean towards getting legal input on this...

deleted 11mo ago

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gregbot 11mo ago

What is this data that Core wants exactly? Are old pebble apps compatible with the new devices? Edit: under what license did rebble scrape the app code? Couldn’t Core Devices scrape it from rebble under the same logic?

markn951 11mo ago
Yes
Liquix 11mo ago
> ...Pebble Technology Corporation, went out of business and dropped support for the hundreds of thousands of Pebble smartwatches out there. Rebble – and our community! – put together a Herculean effort to salvage the data that was left on the Pebble app store. > We’ve built a totally new dev portal, where y’all submitted brand new apps that never existed while Pebble was around. > 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! it sounds like Rebble scraped the original store, built a new API and storage layer, facilitated the publishing of new apps, and kept old apps updated when external changes would've rendered them otherwise unusable. then tried to work with Eric to reach an agreement where both parties could have a piece of the pie in the relaunch.
mikepurvis 11mo ago
I'm pretty sure everything on the Rebble store today is free, but I think the real fight here is about who gets to own the default (only?) storefront that then has the option to offer paid apps/faces... and collect a whatever-percent cut of that forever.

synapsomorphy 11mo ago

Assuming Eric / Core doesn't come out with some scathing "real story": Well, it's better to figure this out today (that Eric / Core are not so great) rather than a year or two down the line when I'd have already bought a new Pebble. Still sucks, I was excited. Never had one but I want something in the same niche. Does anyone have suggestions for other good low-capability, long battery, hackable eink watches?

bcraven 11mo ago
>Does anyone have suggestions for other good low-capability, long battery, hackable eink watches? We've been looking for these for years, and never found them. Pebble coming back was the solution that we all dreamed about.
Zetaphor 11mo ago
Former Rebble dev here, I've been very happy with the BangleJS. It doesn't meet all of your criteria but the battery lasts me a week and it's more hackable than Pebble ever was.
yehoshuapw 11mo ago
not eink, but have a look at pinetime
mhitza 11mo ago
If you're not looking for a smartwatch, but a hackable digital watch check out sensorwatch.net or other mods that may exist for the Casio F-91W
preisschild 11mo ago
> low-capability, long battery, hackable eink watches? Gadgetbridge works pretty well with Amazfit smart watches, although they are OLED, not eink. Batteries last more than 1 week. https://gadgetbridge.org/ https://gadgetbridge.org/
throwaway290 11mo ago
Garmin instinct? as I remember eink and almost month of battery life

modeless 11mo ago

I used Rebble for many years and bought the new Core Devices watches. The truth is Rebble will die without new hardware. It was declining in usage and I myself stopped using it when my old Pebble hardware gave out, until the prospect of new hardware came around. There needs to be a business making money to build the hardware to support this community. I appreciate that Rebble kept the flame alive, but I support Eric and Core Devices in building a business that makes enough money to fund new development of both hardware and software.

girvo 11mo ago
And the hardware is useless without the software... its a smartwatch ecosystem, they need each other, and Core screwing over Rebble is not OK (if it is true)
- modeless 11mo ago
  Only a small part of the software in use here was written by Rebble. They cloned the Pebble app store originally, but the store has no value by itself. What makes it valuable is the catalog of watchfaces and apps, approximately none of which were built by Rebble. They were originally scraped by Rebble from Pebble, which makes the accusation of scraping here ironic. The software on the watch itself is mostly Pebble software with mostly Core Devices modifications. The phone app was written mostly by Core Devices. By Rebble's own admission using Rebble code only saved Core Devices "a month or two of engineering effort". And the "more restrictive license" they're accused of adding is AGPL, still aggressively open source. It's also strange to me that the Bluetooth commit they point to before claiming "Rebble paid for the work" was actually written by Liam McLoughlin, a Google and former Fitbit and Pebble engineer. Was Rebble paying a Google engineer?
  - deleted 11mo ago
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  - shkkmo 11mo ago
    > They were originally scraped by Rebble from Pebble, which makes the accusation of scraping here ironic. Scraping data because the original publisher is going under to prevent the data from being lost is very different from scraping data from someone who you are actively trying negotiate with over use of that data. > It's also strange to me that the Bluetooth commit they point to before claiming "Rebble paid for the work" was actually written by Liam McLoughlin, a Google and former Fitbit engineer. Was Rebble paying a Google engineer? The claim was that Rebble paid the developers of NimBLE, Codecoup, to assist with integration of NimBLE into RebbleOS

syntaxing 11mo ago

I wonder if there is a third option. Partner with someone like Pine64 and release your own watches. I find it hard to believe that the market is that big to begin with. If you have a small batch that can attract the tinkers and engineers like us, it’ll be a self fulfilling cycle. More users, more contributors, more income.

solarkraft 11mo ago
Rebble did have a hardware project when I looked into the community, but I think they lacked the resources to get very far with it. A bummer in my opinion because they probably have the understanding of what makes a good smartwatch that most of the industry seems to lack.

zeroCalories 11mo ago

Wow. Yielding to a benevolent dictator requires a lot of trust, and it seems Eric is doing his best to exhaust any he might have had. Want to hear more from those involved, but seriously considering cancelling my order.

cproctor 11mo ago

I'm new to Pebble and have been excited about joining the community; I have a Pebble Time 2 on preorder. I will certainly cancel the pre-order unless Rebble affirmatively says they are satisfied with the arrangement.

mikepurvis 11mo ago
I'm in the exact same position. It's beyond belief that the new (hardware) company wouldn't see itself in long-term collaboration with the community organization (providing services/platform). Indeed, it bodes rather poorly for the sustainability of Core if they're already behaving like owning everything is critical to satisfying some hypergrowth checkbox. I kind of thought the whole point of the new organization was not to be another startup and to rather to be more like a scaled cottage industry player, making a niche product for nerds and selling it directly to them for a reasonable upfront profit margin rather than depending on collecting rent from a closed app ecosystem to pay the bills.

charcircuit 11mo ago

The author sounds like a pushover who can't stand up for themselves.

super256 11mo ago
The author sounds exactly like I expect a non-profit director to be asking the community of their opinion. I wish Wikimedia would act like this. I find the author's behavior excellent.
g-b-r 11mo ago
The author of the Rebble post?

girvo 11mo ago

Oh... oh no :( I was really looking forward to my pre-ordered Time 2, as a Pebble Steel then Time Round owner. But you cannot do this to Rebble. You just can't, this is unacceptable. Cancelling my preorder :(

shrinks99 11mo ago

What a bummer. It seems like what they're asking for here (a written agreement that users will be able to access 3rd party app stores) would be a win win win for Core Devices, Rebble, and users. Core Devices gets to look like a super good guy (ideally driving interest in the product), Rebble gets to look like a huge winner maintaining something for the community (as they are), and users get an open ecosystem. There's still a chance for a win here, but looks like the door is closing.

Vexs 11mo ago

I don't think _anyone_ who's buying the new pebble watches is to some degree not interested in software, and probably pretty interested in open-source community work. It's a wildly niche userbase, and this sort of thing is going to put crazy pressure on Eric and co, I imagine. Still keeping my preorder, but damn dude this kinda sucks.

abhorrence 11mo ago

I'm torn here. I love that Rebble folks have kept things alive. I also love that Eric underwent the effort to make new hardware. I'm also a bit sad that this is the first we're hearing of this tension, because it likely would've changed my decision to purchase a new Core 2 Duo watch, and I would've preferred this sort of falling out happen before a lot of devices have been purchased.

cut3 11mo ago
Can you cancel the preorder? Or is the device you mentioned already out and too old to return? Some credit cards will refund you if terms changed after a purchase as well.

m463 11mo ago

Looks like it went from Apache license to dual AGPLv3 and commercial. I think apache is fine for commercial use. It seems to me the terms of the apache license weren't followed? In there it says to include the apache license file, not throw it away. (I am not a lawyer) AGPLv3 seems decent - if you run it on a server, the users of that server can get the software I think.

Klaus23 11mo ago

Once again, we have the situation where someone uses an Apache or BSD licence, only to then wonder why others do exactly what the licence allows. If you want others, especially companies, to play nice, you have to make them do so. Use GPL or AGPL. Let's hope Rebble doesn't get steamrollered. They did good work when the original company failed its users.

monster_truck 11mo ago

I've always considered these people to be scam artists after they promised sapphire crystal faces in the original kickstarter and then shipped cheap garbage.

RandomBacon 11mo ago
I wasn't there for the original Pebble, but was that a stretch goal, or the promised specs no matter how many sold? I can understand them not fulfilling a stretch goal even though that's kind of crappy. If it was a promised spec for every watch no matter what, then that is not cool.
Dylan16807 11mo ago
Are you sure? I can't find a single mention of this anywhere. And that would have been an extremely aggressive move unrelated to the main point of the watch.

sgentle 11mo ago

Getting strong The Scorpion and the Frog vibes from this situation. Unfortunately, this is just the nature of a profit-maximising entity. Profit is the gap between how much it can take and how little it can give. It concedes nothing without a demand. Why would it? The playbook isn't exactly a secret. What you might describe as a "classic walled garden enshittification trap", Peter Thiel and Sam Altman would describe as "monopoly (affectionate)": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REKbaA6USy4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REKbaA6USy4 – "proprietary technology, network effects, economies of scale", exactly by the book. I think the bias towards optimism is commendable but I hope this is the wake-up call the community needs to treat "your love is valuable enough to build a business around" as the Faustian bargain it is and keep Core Devices on a short leash. They want to own you, not work with you. It's their nature.

doctorpangloss 11mo ago

eric, you make aesthetic experiences. you're not endeavoring to make a giant company, you're making the doughnut shop (https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/georges-donuts-hims-trump-donation-20049321.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/georges...). nobody needs a watch. don't be greedy.

gregbot 11mo ago
It really doesn’t make any sense for the central software repository of a new product to be controlled by an independent third party. I would have a lot of concerns about that if i were a user of these new pebbles
- deleted 11mo ago
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- doix 11mo ago
  The 3rd party has continued to exist when the first party support died the first time. It's the exact opposite, you don't want to buy a device that is tied to some 1st party service. The service can go down and you're stuck with a brick.
- a2128 11mo ago
  It doesn't make sense in isolation, but the first party failed to do this work for the past 10 years and then wants to benefit from a third party who did do the work. Either the third party should get a seat at the table, or they should start fresh with an empty first party store

throwaway38294 11mo ago

Bummer. I preordered a Time 2 but I'll just cancel if the company is going to screw over the community that kept them alive.

mmastrac 11mo ago

The move from LGPL to Apache/MIT as the default license only _really_ benefit business. There was a lot of FUD against LGPL that was probably driven by the fact that businesses wanted to slurp up open-source libraries and bundle them into valuable bits of tech without having to contribute back or compensate the library authors.

rf15 11mo ago

What a mess. Eric, I think you will have some explaining and negotiating to do. You might feel like you don't have the time, but this could soon turn existential for your project. For now I keep my order up, I'm sure there's a way for both of you to reach an agreement that doesn't devalue one or the other party. For those immediately jumping ship: have some patience and observe. You heard one side of the story that yes, someone was frustrated enough to drag all of this public, but that cannot possibly tell the whole story. Please stop escalating the problem by throwing it all away and instead seek to reach out and steer this around instead.

Aeolun 11mo ago
I dunno how you can represent this any other way. The Rebble people more or less say they did nothing but give stuff away and want to talk. Eric/Core seem to be taking and taking, and giving nothing back.
- nar001 11mo ago
  For what it's worth he IS contributing to libpebble3 at least, but yes most of it is closed I do get the idea, he wants to build hardware and thus needs to be able to do whatever he wants to the code and not wait for merges but it sucks he seems to probably take it too far, for example not using the Rebble mobile app and instead making his own around the library, that's also closed source
  - Aeolun 11mo ago
    I mean, it’s not that I necessarily blame him for taking stuff that is open source, but giving the impression that you will not sideline the others entirely and then doing so anyway feels icky. I wouldn’t want to deal with a random open source project while running a company either, but I wouldn’t try to pretend to either, I hope.
- consp 11mo ago
  That's modern capitalism for you. Sad to see, if there is not proper response in the next few days it's cancel time.

mvanveen 11mo ago

Has the Rebble community ever explored their own open source HW for the rebble ecosystem? I know there’s a ton of work involved to get something high quality/consumer grade and there’s obviously cost implications correlated to order volume and we were all hoping Core Devices would offer the goods but maybe we can lean into a community driven model for the hardware as well?

davidzweig 11mo ago
I'd be surprised if more 'hackable' watches didn't pop up around the Sifli chips. Lilygo have an upcoming device with Sifli 52 chip. There's the SF32LB52-ULP smartwatch development board.
- mvanveen 11mo ago
  The Silfi 52 chip is news to me- thanks for pointing it out (also didn't know it's what is powering the new Core Devices products- pretty cool). I've built custom firmware for a DIY OLED ESP-32 watch that is made by a few vendors before. In some ways we're emerging into that reality now but I'd admit that what Core Devices is trying to do and the general level of polish of the Pebble ecosystem is a lot further than something like what I'm describing.

chucklenorris 11mo ago

Block access to your servers and offer firmware for their watches with access to your servers. Most people who use these watches are nerdy enough to dislike this behavior and able to flash a new firmware.

deleted 11mo ago

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jdenning 11mo ago

I'm not shocked - Pebble showed their true colors years ago when they ran the kickstarter campaign for the Time 2, which they cancelled and sold out to Fitbit. They never cared about their community. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getpebble/pebble-2-time-2-and-core-an-entirely-new-3g-ultra/posts/1752929 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getpebble/pebble-2-time...

danpalmer 11mo ago
Is that really an example of not caring about the community? The business failed, and they refunded everyone who had pledged. The sale to Fitbit was probably the way they funded those refunds. That seems like an unfortunate ending but one that indicated some amount of care for the community.
- jdenning 11mo ago
  The timeline of the campaign makes it pretty clear that either: 1) they knew they were insolvent, and wouldn’t be able to continue or 2) the campaign was used to demonstrate market demand to enable their sale to Fitbit Edit: also, they sold for $23 million [1], total pledges were for about $13 million, and not everyone got a refund [2] [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/fitbit-bought-pebble-for-23-million-2017-2?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/fitbit-bought-pebble-for-23-... [2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getpebble/pebble-2-time-2-and-core-an-entirely-new-3g-ultra/comments https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getpebble/pebble-2-time...
AshamedCaptain 11mo ago
Shouldn't come as a surprise for anyone that followed them since the Allerta days.

ehead 11mo ago

It sounds like theres room for a deal here; multiple app stores are very trendy right now :) My preorder is definitely on the line if this doesn't get fixed.

lrvick 11mo ago

I am the primary author of the current generation Pebble Appstore frontend, the one that maintained the database most of the time, the guy who ran the security, infrastructure, data privacy team, and quite a few things around the Pebble ecosystem over the years. I also was on the team that begrudgingly had to hand it all over to Fitbit in the acquisition. I have a very strong opinion here. Any development of Pebble as an ecosystem that is not 100% free open source software and available to the public, is a dick move at this point. It is a dick move if Eric does it in any way, and it is a dick move if the Rebble team does it in any way. Let Eric or anyone else scrape what they want with the Appstore and wish them luck. Maybe even make a nice JSON export button for people, why not? Meanwhile those in the community should keep doing what they have always done: Work towards fully open source community first solutions with the full blessing and support of said community. Proprietary solutions are always a dead end so do not waste any energy fighting them or thinking about them. Just keep pushing to public repos.

arthurcolle 11mo ago
If you had sudo permissions on the situation what 10 steps would you want to see happen to resolve this whole affair?
- lrvick 11mo ago
  1. All: Put an FOSS license file in every single repo involved and make it public 2. Rebble: Make every database be easy to export as JSON or similar 3. All: Let everyone do what they want 4. Core Devices: Make it easy for devices to point at Core Devices or Rebble services and firmware updates as they like Could not come up with 6 more steps. Fighting those with (perceived or real) intention to profit from community work is a waste of energy that can be better spent serving that community. Best to focus on making people want to run the open source alternatives over any proprietary first party solutions that may or may not emerge.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
11mo ago

EspadaV9 11mo ago

Like many others here, I was excited to hear pebble return, and have a Time 2 on preorder, but will be cancelling it if I don't hear a positive outcome from this.

lanyard-textile 11mo ago

This is not good. > We’ll compromise on almost everything else, but our one red line is this: Whatever we agree on, there has to be a future for Rebble in there. I can see through to the good intentions, but this mindset has a very dangerous sandbagging risk to the other party. Could you imagine a company forcing you to exclusively use them and only them as a vendor for the foreseeable future? Not just for a single contract, but for many contracts beyond it? Or one especially long contract? That’s just not fair. There are some other red flags here too. I am not convinced they have the ability to license a database they themselves scraped, nor if there’s any obligation to merge the particular code changes if any back upstream.

rkangel 11mo ago
That's not what they're demanding (or at least, that's only one way of giving them what they're demanding). A legal guarantee that they'll allow people to configure their watches for an alternate app store would probably be sufficient, for instance.
- lanyard-textile 11mo ago
  I agree, I think that’s the intended interpretation — but I’m disappointed that’s not their stated redline then, though. The ask there is for a future in app stores beyond Core Devices, not just for Rebble specifically. That is a call for Core to open their platform; what they have now is a call for Core to open their platform to them.

xyzzy_plugh 11mo ago

I read the whole post and all the links. Rebble's work is, as far as I can tell, entirely open source. The contents of the database are not, but those contents are predominantly a curation of other people's work, most of which is open source, along with some stats. I'm having a hard time buying into this argument that any theft is actually occurring. Rebble can keep on doing their thing if they want. Core is free to use their open source (and relicense! but obviously they can't retroactively relicense the prior work, nor can they change the license in Rebble's repos). To be perfectly honest this reads to me like the pot calling the kettle black. The fact that any of this even exists -- Rebble, Core, the firmware OSS, the Pebble name again -- feels miraculous. More litigious lawyers could have squashed these things at numerous points. I feel sorry for the Rebble folks that they feel they're getting the short end of all of this. But that's the beauty of it all, of Open Source. I do hope that Core and Rebble can find a way to be more harmonious moving forward. And I hope everything continues to be Open Source.

eurg 11mo ago

Unfortunate. I'll wait some days for the response, but it better be a good one. This behavior from Core may be par for the course, but I can already buy watches from companies that have values only for marketing. It's a small niche, and being nice would not cost much. And they already died once, without having a proper off-ramp for their users - for now I don't trust them to exist in another two years. (I'm not really sure they even are in this for the long term - talk is cheap.)

eurg 11mo ago
So, the response is here. Without a closer look I can't say what's really going on - although I lean toward believing that Core is going in the right direction - but there still seem to be some orange flags.

solarkraft 11mo ago

The behavior of the Pebble company has not sat right with me since I discovered the following things way back when: - You can’t directly access the microphone audio - They don’t sell replacement parts A bad look for a “hacker watch” and apparently not a fluke. Oh, and they just dropped all of their users when they sold themselves to Fitbit. Rebble have demonstrated great stewardship of the ecosystem, Eric has not. My trust is with Rebble. That said: It was Core Devices who made my watch work again on iOS, the Rebble project for this never materialized.

awoimbee 11mo ago

That's why the GPL license was created.

AJRF 11mo ago

Very uncool of Eric! Thank you for the work you've put in over the years.

Havoc 11mo ago

This gives me Highschool „I can change him“ energy. Negotiation and compromise has its place but if someone negotiates by only taking you bail

chamik 11mo ago

That's a bummer. I have a time 2 pre-ordered and was looking forward to using it. So far no response from Eric. If it won't be a good one, I'll cancel the preorder.

dzogchen 11mo ago
Same here, I’ll cancel this week if there is no satisfactory response.

Anonbrit 11mo ago

That's my orders (2 watches) cancelled. I don't see Core Devices doing anything good unless it appears to be affecting their bottom line, so I'm voting with my wallet. If things get sorted, I can order again

imtringued 11mo ago

Keeps stealing? Are you sure you aren't winning already? Imagine if all they did was clone your repo and change nothing. That would be maximum theft and yet I somehow doubt that this would have made the rebble guys unhappy.

summermusic 11mo ago

I already received my Pebble 2 Duo and it's been such a joy to own, but I will definitely be canceling my Pebble Time 2 preorder if Eric keeps acting like this.

dang 11mo ago

Response thread: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45969250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45969250