[pokoleo]

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.

[margalabargala]

> 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.

[shreddit]

Rebble sounds pretty much like a non profit to me

> The Rebble Foundation is a non-profit organization that keeps the Pebble community alive. rebble.io

https://rebble.foundation/

[palmotea]

>> 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.

[apparent]

> 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...

[gorbachev]

Core went bankrupt once doing exactly what they want to do now. I think the concern users will be left holding the bag, again, is reasonable.

[apparent]

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.

[pokoleo]

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?

[calgoo]

There are also a bunch of cancelled order right now, so maybe they suddenly had a surplus of available devices...

[gcr]

It seems like that's exactly the sot of agreement that was proposed and then fell through.

[trklausss]

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...