Google open-sources the Pebble OS • Hacker News Board

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#151

Post by zinekeller » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 5:50 AM UTC

adastra22 wrote: post #145

addicted wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the opportunity for a shit ton of lawsuits. Source code like this doesn’t just have no value for Google. It has negative value. It’s a massive liability. That’s why big cos simply bury source code instead of releasing it in the open.

Liability for what?

Unrelated to smartwatches, but the usual reason that I've heard on why video drivers are not open-sourced directly (AMDGPU =/= AMDGPU PRO and Nvidia's recent parallel driver efforts) is that there are copyright (old code that is not written by ATI/AMD or Nvidia/3dfx and AMD/Nvidia not getting the rights to it) and patent (techniques used may be patented by their competitors) concerns.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#152

Post by adastra22 » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 5:51 AM UTC

zinekeller wrote: post #151

adastra22 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liability for what?

Unrelated to smartwatches, but the usual reason that I've heard on why video drivers are not open-sourced directly (AMDGPU =/= AMDGPU PRO and Nvidia's recent parallel driver efforts) is that there are copyright (old code that is not written by ATI/AMD or Nvidia/3dfx and AMD/Nvidia not getting the rights to it) and patent (techniques used may be patented by their competitors) concerns.

For that to be an issue here, there would have to be revenue from the Pebble line of products. Otherwise how would they show monetary loss?

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#153

Post by Zamiel_Snawley » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 5:56 AM UTC

tim-- wrote: post #136

Zamiel_Snawley wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

ThreadX was open sourced by Microsoft.

You’re right! I got my wires crossed with Azure and AWS.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#154

Post by Zamiel_Snawley » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 5:57 AM UTC

Gigachad wrote: post #132

Zamiel_Snawley wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were many models of Pebble. The original definitely had epaper[0]. [0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getpebble/pebble-e-pape...

It was an LCD[0] but you are right that they marketed it as "epaper". But it certainly was not people normally think of as epaper where there are colored capsules that can hold their image without power. The Pebble just had an LCD that looked visually similar to epaper. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_(watch)#Hardware

I stand corrected, thanks.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#155

Post by LegitShady » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 6:20 AM UTC

bix6 wrote: post #22

Can anyone comment on Google’s Business reasons for doing this? Is this actually an act of goodwill or is this a commodity, antitrust, etc. play?

google isn't doing anything with it, its not really a competitor to androidwear, and it probably has enough pebble nerd fans within google itself to push for it.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#156

Post by arghwhat » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 6:49 AM UTC

jmathai wrote: post #127

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.

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.

You'd be surprised by how much PR specifically targets a certain audience.

Converting a zero-value IP into low impact positive PR has business value. Making MS-DOS sources public falls in the same bucket.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#157

Post by arghwhat » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 6:55 AM UTC

adastra22 wrote: post #152

zinekeller wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unrelated to smartwatches, but the usual reason that I've heard on why video drivers are not open-sourced directly (AMDGPU =/= AMDGPU PRO and Nvidia's recent parallel driver efforts) is that there are copyright (old code that is not written by ATI/AMD or Nvidia/3dfx and AMD/Nvidia not getting the rights to it) and patent (techniques used may be patented by their competitors) concerns.

For that to be an issue here, there would have to be revenue from the Pebble line of products. Otherwise how would they show monetary loss?

They have had revenue as pebble sold their smartwatches. Acquisition includes liability.

You do not need revenue to be liable though.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#158

Post by The_Colonel » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 7:12 AM UTC

refulgentis wrote: post #126

Zamiel_Snawley wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think Google understands hardware given its lack of success in it.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#159

Post by The_Colonel » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 7:15 AM UTC

dcreater wrote: post #133

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.

That's what happens when you don't have to play by the rules of reality. Googles monopoly allows them to act like this. It's unfair and generally bad for everyone involved. Thankfully it seems that that era is finally going to end

> It's unfair and generally bad for everyone involved.

The solution is simple - don't hop on Google's new products (there's a risk with the older ones as well, albeit smaller). It's just not worth it to invest your money and time with such a significant risk of it getting killed (and its general half-assedness). There are usually alternatives.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#160

Post by ksec » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 7:21 AM UTC

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…

They could consider open source everything you have killed ( https://killedbygoogle.com ) over the years.

May be the whole design and development process from the start should be everything they do could one day be open sourced. So be aware what you do and what you comment.