top | item 45960893

Core Devices keeps stealing our work

608 points| jdauriemma | 3 months ago |rebble.io

116 comments

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lrvick|3 months 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.

lrvick|3 months ago

FWIIW I have not yet talked to either side about this and we should wait to hear more from the other side before we raise our torches too high.

But regardless of whatever happens with Core Devices and Rebble: Personally, I just want choice and ownership. If Core Devices does not make it hard to compile and load my own firmware from FOSS sources, and so long as there is a short path to interface with new hardware over bluetooth/wifi/lora etc with a FOSS SDK or CLI tools, I am very likely to be a customer and ignore any drama.

The pursuit of more hackability and choice are why I backed Pebble in the first kickstarter, and the lack of total freedom and choice in daily-wear-ready devices in the current market are why I have exclusively used analog watches the past 5+ years.

user_7832|3 months ago

Am I right in assuming that a large number of different people have contributed to this entire ecosystem throughout the years/decades?

I totally get why you wouldn't want your work to end up silo'd to a specific org if you had created it, intending it to be used by the general user, and not (via) a company.

arthurcolle|3 months ago

If you had sudo permissions on the situation what 10 steps would you want to see happen to resolve this whole affair?

jwise0|3 months ago

Lance -- I really like this comment because it is a compelling argument for something other than the viewpoint I hold. Obviously I am not fully convinced by it (yet?). But this is the kind of discussion that we had hoped for in response to this post. Thanks for posting it.

amatecha|3 months 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...

danpalmer|3 months 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|3 months 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.

rf15|3 months 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|3 months 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.

synapsomorphy|3 months 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|3 months 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|3 months 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.

mhitza|3 months 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

yehoshuapw|3 months ago

not eink, but have a look at pinetime

throwaway290|3 months ago

Garmin instinct? as I remember eink and almost month of battery life

preisschild|3 months 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/

shrinks99|3 months 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.

cproctor|3 months 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|3 months 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.

lanyard-textile|3 months 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|3 months 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.

abhorrence|3 months 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|3 months 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.

modeless|3 months 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|3 months 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)

Vexs|3 months 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.

rideontime|3 months ago

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

solarkraft|3 months 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.

syntaxing|3 months 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|3 months 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.

girvo|3 months 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 :(

mvanveen|3 months 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|3 months 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.

gregbot|3 months 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?

Liquix|3 months 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|3 months 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.

ycombinatrix|3 months 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?

TheDong|3 months 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.

foobarchu|3 months ago

It is, Amazon in particular is famous for this. It's a big part of the ride of "business source licenses" (see recent hububs around redis and hashicorp)

hobs|3 months 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).

Anonbrit|3 months 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

m463|3 months 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.

zeroCalories|3 months 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.

throwaway38294|3 months 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.

xyzzy_plugh|3 months 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.

Klaus23|3 months 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.

chucklenorris|3 months 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.

eurg|3 months 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|3 months 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.

sgentle|3 months 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 – "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.

ehead|3 months 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.

summermusic|3 months 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.

EspadaV9|3 months 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.

cyberax|3 months 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.

chamik|3 months 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|3 months ago

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

mmastrac|3 months 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.

Havoc|3 months 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

awoimbee|3 months ago

That's why the GPL license was created.

imtringued|3 months 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.

Adam2025|3 months 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.

AJRF|3 months ago

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

julianlam|3 months 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.

latentsea|3 months 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!".

monster_truck|3 months 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|3 months 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|3 months 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.

doctorpangloss|3 months 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...).

nobody needs a watch. don't be greedy.

gregbot|3 months 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

jdenning|3 months 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...

danpalmer|3 months 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.

AshamedCaptain|3 months ago

Shouldn't come as a surprise for anyone that followed them since the Allerta days.

charcircuit|3 months ago

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

super256|3 months 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|3 months ago

The author of the Rebble post?