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Google open-sources the Pebble OS

opensource.googleblog.com

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Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#111

Post by andybak »

gaudystead wrote: post #110
andybak wrote: post #69

This, Google Wave, Tilt Brush (and more recently Blocks). And probably others I've forgotten. This really does help mitigate the damage done by "Killed by Google" and people are genuinely grateful (personally in my case). But even better would be to fix the dysfunctional internal dynamics that cause this syndrome in what appears to be disproportionally more frequently compared to other corporations.

In case anyone would like a more complete list of products Google has killed, here's a handy website to mourn your favorite dead product: https://killedbygoogle.com/ RIP Google Wave... I had such high hopes when it was first released... :'(

In case I was unclear - I was aiming for the list of "unkilled by Google". Shorter but more interesting.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#112

Post by andybak »

talldayo wrote: post #91
andybak wrote: post #69

This, Google Wave, Tilt Brush (and more recently Blocks). And probably others I've forgotten. This really does help mitigate the damage done by "Killed by Google" and people are genuinely grateful (personally in my case). But even better would be to fix the dysfunctional internal dynamics that cause this syndrome in what appears to be disproportionally more frequently compared to other corporations.

Eh, I take a much more "gloves off" approach to this mentality. If you bought an Airport thinking that it would be your forever router, you're a moron. Same goes for buying an eero, or Google Home, or even an iPad at this point. You don't own this hardware, you control nothing about it. The idea that products live forever is a bedtime story we tell ourselves, an utter fairytale of the software industry. Everyone kill…

I think you're rather missing the specific point in the process of making a much broader one.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#113

Post by astrange »

8thcross wrote: post #108

"This means the code being released contains all the build system files (using the waf build system), but it will not compile or link as released." But what can you do with this?

Read it and educate yourself. Feed it to an LLM for training data. Put it back together with the binary bits from an existing build.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#114

Post by itishappy »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #84

People passing cynical comments at Google need to understand that at a big co like Google, something like this doesn't 'just happen'. It probably happened because some passionate L6/L7 engineer wanted to do it and pushed through the bureaucracy to get approvals for it, probably largely on their own time (by which I mean that this was at best a side-project for them and at worst a distraction that was losing them favo…

I think it's perfectly reasonable to celebrate this action and the individuals who championed it while also being cynical of the big tech orgs that resist changes like this for the reasons described.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#115

Post by robocat »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #84

People passing cynical comments at Google need to understand that at a big co like Google, something like this doesn't 'just happen'. It probably happened because some passionate L6/L7 engineer wanted to do it and pushed through the bureaucracy to get approvals for it, probably largely on their own time (by which I mean that this was at best a side-project for them and at worst a distraction that was losing them favo…

The only financial benefit for Google that I could guess would be to drive complement prices to zero (assuming some Pebble refresh is successful), as part of competition against Apple watch.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#116

Post by sbrother »

andybak wrote: post #69

This, Google Wave, Tilt Brush (and more recently Blocks). And probably others I've forgotten. This really does help mitigate the damage done by "Killed by Google" and people are genuinely grateful (personally in my case). But even better would be to fix the dysfunctional internal dynamics that cause this syndrome in what appears to be disproportionally more frequently compared to other corporations.

Inbox is the one that still stings for me. I'm paying some silly amount for Superhuman which is almost there, but.. nothing is as good as Inbox was.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#118

Post by cmrdporcupine »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #84

People passing cynical comments at Google need to understand that at a big co like Google, something like this doesn't 'just happen'. It probably happened because some passionate L6/L7 engineer wanted to do it and pushed through the bureaucracy to get approvals for it, probably largely on their own time (by which I mean that this was at best a side-project for them and at worst a distraction that was losing them favo…

From my experience with working there, it wasn't actually that hard to advocate and get things open sourced that my team worked on after Google made the decision to kill it. (ndash video player stuff that was being done by the team I was on in Fiber @ Google Waterloo). Management is on the whole open to these things, and Google -- unlike other companies I've been at -- has an official process for this, and it feels on the whole fair.

For all the sins that Google commits, they're generally decent about the whole open source community. There's things they rely on they should be providing funding for, certainly. But they're good about letting their people contribute, and often good about opening things up to the outside world.

Of course this project is bigger and more complicated, and clearly had tendrils into a lot of other things, so...

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#120

Post by girvo »

Gigachad wrote: post #86
girvo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite, but a transflective one (from Sharp, I believe) which gave it a lot of the benefits of daylight readability while being much much easier to program for and work with.

At the cost of looking very dull and washed out.

With the benefit of a much improved battery life compared to a lot of other smart-watches. A worthy trade off, IMHO. And it its a lot less washed out than current colour (real) e-ink displays
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