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Pebble Watch software is now open source

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Re: Pebble Watch software is now open source

#171

Post by rkangel »

apparent wrote: post #12
erohead wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question! (I am the Pebble founder) When factories restart, not all of the workers who were working there before actually come back to work. Some of them stay in their hometowns or they get other jobs. This means that restarting the production line actually means retraining people on how to assemble the product. There is also an entire supply chain behind the assembly line that takes time to restart. Think of al…

Thanks for explaining this. Would you estimate that the January units will be more likely to have issues than the later ones, since they'll be first off the line? Or will there be no changes to the components/process that might make the later units more reliable?

A good manufacturing process (with the appropriate level of testing) should result in yield variations, not quality variations. i.e. if the line is running less well for some reason, then you end up throwing more in the bin rather than shipping bad product.

Re: Pebble Watch software is now open source

#172

Post by t0bia_s »

apparent wrote: post #138
t0bia_s wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really disappointing! I want BW eink screen, I'm not interested in colour version at all.

Out of curiosity, what's the downside of color? The screen on the new watches is also substantially larger. AFAIK there's no discernible battery life penalty for the color watches (even with the larger screen).

Price, durability, battery life, contrast ratio and overall not usability for my needs.

Re: Pebble Watch software is now open source

#173

Post by 123pie123 »

pjc50 wrote: post #169
paxcoder wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So not 100% open source. Thanks for the info

Incidentally, this is one reason why there's not so much open source hardware out there: people get pedantic about it and apply gradually more unreasonable levels of requirement, rather than accepting partially or substantially open source solutions.

The reason why people get "pedantic" about this stuff, is due the ability in the future to get screwed over when the priority blob owner start to charge money or other pull other license crap

Re: Pebble Watch software is now open source

#174

Post by rowanG077 »

fsflover wrote: post #167
gf000 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Above a certain complexity, there is basically no 100% open-source hardware out there. Like none of the Pinephone, Librem, Framework laptops are "open-source" to the bone.

Precursor is fully open though, https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor

It's not. Most of the ICs and components are not open. Most notably the Xilinx XC7S50 FPGA. It does go much further then any other phone.

Re: Pebble Watch software is now open source

#176

Post by user3939382 »

pjc50 wrote: post #169
paxcoder wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So not 100% open source. Thanks for the info

Incidentally, this is one reason why there's not so much open source hardware out there: people get pedantic about it and apply gradually more unreasonable levels of requirement, rather than accepting partially or substantially open source solutions.

Read Reflections on Trusting Trust to understand why having little bits of binary blobs sprinkled all over your compute arch is actually a major problem. Just because it’s a hard problem doesn’t mean we’re gonna pretend it’s fine.

Re: Pebble Watch software is now open source

#177

Post by 0xEF »

pjc50 wrote: post #169
paxcoder wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So not 100% open source. Thanks for the info

Incidentally, this is one reason why there's not so much open source hardware out there: people get pedantic about it and apply gradually more unreasonable levels of requirement, rather than accepting partially or substantially open source solutions.

I can be pedantically forgiving myself, admittedly, but this is one thing I'm staunchly behind. If I cannot read every character of every line of code, including packages/dependencies, that makes the hardware function and allows me to alter it as I see fit, then it is not truly open-sourced.

For me, the open-source movement is about keeping my software and hardware in alignment with my values and security concerns. If there is a part of that "open-sourced" software that is closed to me, I have no way to evaluate that and determine if I want to use it. Yes, this imposes some extremely strict limitations about what I end up with in my projects, but I'm okay with this since it forces me to think differently about certain problems.

I also don't mind that other people use product with closed-source portions or whatever, and in fact, find some of them quite good. I'm a wearer of an original Pebble to this day, and I'm fine with knowing some proprietary libraries are needed to make it go. I didn't build it, I'm not hacking on it, it's just serving my meager smartwatch needs in this instance.

What I do mind is misappropriation of what I consider a clearly defined term. I am not sure why we haven't come up with another term to mean "partially open-sourced" yet (or have we, and I am just not aware of it?) but I think it's time we did so more discerning users can delineate between the two when making a decision about products to purchase or build.

Re: Pebble Watch software is now open source

#179

Post by 0xEF »

user3939382 wrote: post #176
pjc50 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally, this is one reason why there's not so much open source hardware out there: people get pedantic about it and apply gradually more unreasonable levels of requirement, rather than accepting partially or substantially open source solutions.

Read Reflections on Trusting Trust to understand why having little bits of binary blobs sprinkled all over your compute arch is actually a major problem. Just because it’s a hard problem doesn’t mean we’re gonna pretend it’s fine.

PDF link for those that are curious: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...

The general sentiment is that you cannot trust code you did not write yourself and that we need to be able to trust the person who did, but you can form your own conclusions about how that fits into the modern tech landscape.

Re: Pebble Watch software is now open source

#180

Post by lrvick »

gf000 wrote: post #147
paxcoder wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So not 100% open source. Thanks for the info

Above a certain complexity, there is basically no 100% open-source hardware out there. Like none of the Pinephone, Librem, Framework laptops are "open-source" to the bone.

The BeTrusted/Precursor devices and Raptor Engineering workstations are actually 100% open software and schematics.
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