Well the Pebble specific parts are. This is an unfortunate state of affairs from hardware manufacturers, they are very late to the open source game, if at all.
Between the cross-licensing of hardware IP blocks and 3rd party software which never sees the light of the day, hardware manufacturers work like a secretive three letter agency to be able to control every part of their ecosystem.
I tend to understand where this comes from. It's part business, part continuation of old customs and the way they did it and being able to control obsolescence to be able push new things to the market.
However, if the periphery of the software you put out is closed source, even though this periphery is optional, it's not fair or ethical to say it's 100% open source.
From my perspective, it can be said it's open core, and it's pretty fair, and acceptable in my case, but writing 100% Open Source* (*: 100% of the open part of the software stack, exceptions apply) is not fair game. It's misleading.
Seems a bunch are angry about this, honestly, 100% of what they made/control is open source was a good enough bar for me. Specially if all closed components are optional. I value the flexibility of being able to use or not even closed stuff. It's unclear to me what the issue is, false advertisement ? This is as good as it gets for things like this, maybe the "100%" was indelicate, but I wouldn't go so far as misleading. I can also understand the hardware companies, history has shown that the vast majority of industry actors have a purely parasitical relation to open source, and have no qualms copying/stealing IP.
Hardware isn't that hard to copy paste really, to make it hard you need to use really expensive processes (extreme uv etc), but otherwise, mostly you can pretty much take a picture. (very grossly speaking here, but just saying, the software is definitely a critical part)
>Another important note - some binary blobs and other non-free software components are used today in PebbleOS and the Pebble mobile app (ex: the heart rate sensor on PT2 , Memfault library, and others). Optional non-free web services, like Wispr-flow API speech recognizer, are also used. These non-free software components are not required - you can compile and run Pebble watch software without them. This will always be the case. More non-free software components may appear in our software in the future. The core Pebble watch software stack (everything you need to use your Pebble watch) will always be open source.
> More non-free software components may appear in our software in the future.
That sounds ominous.
I can understand not being able to remove non-free dependencies that were used previously, but that sounds like they intend to create new non-free components.
bayindirh|3 months ago
I tend to understand where this comes from. It's part business, part continuation of old customs and the way they did it and being able to control obsolescence to be able push new things to the market.
However, if the periphery of the software you put out is closed source, even though this periphery is optional, it's not fair or ethical to say it's 100% open source.
From my perspective, it can be said it's open core, and it's pretty fair, and acceptable in my case, but writing 100% Open Source* (*: 100% of the open part of the software stack, exceptions apply) is not fair game. It's misleading.
ddlsmurf|3 months ago
bloppe|3 months ago
ddlsmurf|3 months ago
paxcoder|3 months ago
>Another important note - some binary blobs and other non-free software components are used today in PebbleOS and the Pebble mobile app (ex: the heart rate sensor on PT2 , Memfault library, and others). Optional non-free web services, like Wispr-flow API speech recognizer, are also used. These non-free software components are not required - you can compile and run Pebble watch software without them. This will always be the case. More non-free software components may appear in our software in the future. The core Pebble watch software stack (everything you need to use your Pebble watch) will always be open source.
100% should mean 100%
darkwater|3 months ago
rnewme|3 months ago
RobotToaster|3 months ago
That sounds ominous.
I can understand not being able to remove non-free dependencies that were used previously, but that sounds like they intend to create new non-free components.
wafflemaker|3 months ago