Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google open-sources the Pebble OS

opensource.googleblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 216 posts

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#121

Post by hayleox »

nialv7 wrote: post #93
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 do wonder how they successfully justified this to the higher ups. If anything, I would like to learn from them so I can better justify the things I want to do..

The source code has zero business value to Google at this point – they have another smartwatch OS and there's never gonna be a business case for a company of Google's scale to revive a niche product like this. Releasing means getting free PR on Hacker News and a free morale boost for employees who care about this kind of thing.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#122

Post by jeffbee »

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 mean, Google develops three other open source operating systems and is a major contributor to other operating systems, as well from other vast open projects like Chromium. It's not as if open-sourcing an operating system is even slightly out of character for Google.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#123

Post by 1337shadow »

bombcar wrote: post #71
coldpie wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the original Pebble folks are using this to spin up a re-launch ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845185 ), my guess is the Pebble folks just know someone on the inside at Google who managed to get the lawyers to sign off on it.

From my experience in large (and small) companies, trying to get something that is internally dead open sourced is usually not a huge fight against people saying no, just a laundry-list of things that need to be done before everyone will sign off on it. One motivated person at a decently high enough level can get it pushed through, as long as whoever the person making the decision asks about it says, 'eh, ok.'

> Instead, we took a more direct route - I asked friends at Google (which bought Fitbit, which had bought Pebble’s IP) if they could open source PebbleOS. They said yes! Over the last year, a team inside Google (including some amazing ex-Pebblers turned Googlers) has been working on this. And today is the day - the source code for PebbleOS is now available at github.com/google/pebble (see their blog post).

https://ericmigi.com/blog/why-were-bringing-pebble-back

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#125

Post by Zamiel_Snawley »

hayleox wrote: post #121
nialv7 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder how they successfully justified this to the higher ups. If anything, I would like to learn from them so I can better justify the things I want to do..

The source code has zero business value to Google at this point – they have another smartwatch OS and there's never gonna be a business case for a company of Google's scale to revive a niche product like this. Releasing means getting free PR on Hacker News and a free morale boost for employees who care about this kind of thing.

Isn’t it valuable to Google to keep potential competitors from getting expensive IP for free?

“PebbleOS took dozens of engineers working over 4 years to build, alongside our fantastic product and QA teams. Reproducing that for new hardware would take a long time.” [0]

[0] https://ericmigi.com/blog/why-were-bringing-pebble-back

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#126

Post by refulgentis »

Zamiel_Snawley wrote: post #125
hayleox wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The source code has zero business value to Google at this point – they have another smartwatch OS and there's never gonna be a business case for a company of Google's scale to revive a niche product like this. Releasing means getting free PR on Hacker News and a free morale boost for employees who care about this kind of thing.

Isn’t it valuable to Google to keep potential competitors from getting expensive IP for free? “PebbleOS took dozens of engineers working over 4 years to build, alongside our fantastic product and QA teams. Reproducing that for new hardware would take a long time.” [0] [0] https://ericmigi.com/blog/why-were-bringing-pebble-back

It's 12 years old. They put good work in. But it's missing an absurd amount of stuff the mass market considered mandatory a decade ago. Consumer electronics, for better or worse, is mostly about spending enough money to get your product name in front of hundreds of millions, and Google knows that well.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#127

Post by jmathai »

hayleox wrote: post #121
nialv7 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder how they successfully justified this to the higher ups. If anything, I would like to learn from them so I can better justify the things I want to do..

The source code has zero business value to Google at this point – they have another smartwatch OS and there's never gonna be a business case for a company of Google's scale to revive a niche product like this. Releasing means getting free PR on Hacker News and a free morale boost for employees who care about this kind of thing.

Google does not do this for PR on Hacker News. It also seems improbable, maybe heroic, for one L6/L7 SWE to push this through.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#128

Post by Zamiel_Snawley »

pyuser583 wrote: post #90

How much work is being done in the RTOS space? I would think a lot, but then I hear programmers complain it’s not worth it. Are RTOSs still the future?

I’ve never heard that RTOSs are the future in general. With that said, there are a lot of great RTOS options out there today.

1) PREEMPT_RT recently brought realtime capability to mainline Linux[0].

2) Amazon open sourced the safety-certified ThreadX[1].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PREEMPT_RT

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreadX

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#129

Post by throwaway2037 »

Twirrim wrote: post #104
erohead wrote: post #14

Thank you, Google. You didn't have to, but you did. We are all are extraordinarily grateful. I wrote a blog post about our plans to bring Pebble back, sustainably. https://ericmigi.com/blog/why-were-bringing-pebble-back We got our original start on HN ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3827868 ), it's a pleasure to be back. If you're interested in getting a new Pebble, check out https://rePebble.com

Oh this is awesome news. The Pebble was by far the best smartwatch I've ever used. No quirks, just always reliable. The hard work shone through with how quirk free it was.

I never used a smart watch before. Can you share some examples quirks with other watches?

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#130

Post by Zamiel_Snawley »

Gigachad wrote: post #88
jabroni_salad wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of the original smart watches. What really sets it apart from modern ones is the e-ink display and dead simple interface (just a few buttons, no touchscreen). This simplicity means that it continues to do what it does well and doesn't really feel like it has aged badly. Certainly I would rather wear a pebble than a gen 1 Samsung watch or moto360. It's a delightful bit of kit that was sadly abandoned by owner…

The pebble did not have an e ink display, It was just a low power LCD.

There were many models of Pebble. The original definitely had epaper[0].

[0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getpebble/pebble-e-pape...

Post reply on HN