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Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

ericmigi.com

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Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#221

Post by philipallstar »

totetsu wrote: post #193
infotainment wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed -- While I admire their work in keeping the lights on, Rebble doesn't necessarily make sense in a world where the "real" Pebble company has returned. Keep in mind that this is their goal statement (straight from their FAQ): > Our goal is to maintain and advance Pebble functionality, in the absence of Pebble Technology Corp. Eric's new company, by effectively re-creating Pebble Technology Corp, is an existentia…

Maybe they need a secret ‘Second Rebble’, hidden within Pebble, to take over if it collapses again.

It's open source now, so that's already taken care of.

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#222

Post by philipallstar »

margalabargala wrote: post #130
c22 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

501c3 offers one narrow form of tax exempt status for a very specific type of non-profit organization with specific privileges and duties. Every organization is unique and many non-profit, tax-exempt, and even charitable organizations exist outside of that specific framework. If they're not soliciting donations from you I'm not sure why you'd care about their federal tax status.

> If they're not soliciting donations from you I'm not sure why you'd care about their federal tax status. Because if they appear to be a normal company but call themselves a non-profit, I want to know what that actually means to them. Being a non-profit is generally a reason for community goodwill towards a company. Therefore being a nonprofit is attractive both to companies doing good, and charlatans seeking to cap…

Being a non-profit can definitely just be high salaries and easier access to donations (because people stop thinking once they read "nonprofit").

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#223

Post by philipallstar »

palmotea wrote: post #117
margalabargala wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They fear being replaced/made irrelevant after Core builds their own infrastructure using Rebble's work. They want guarantees that if they give Core access to the app store data, Core won't build a proprietary/walled garden that cuts Rebble out. It's understandable that Rebble fears someone doing this, since this is what Rebble did. Rebble took the original open-source Pebble work of thousands of independent develo…

>> They fear being replaced/made irrelevant after Core builds their own infrastructure using Rebble's work. They want guarantees that if they give Core access to the app store data, Core won't build a proprietary/walled garden that cuts Rebble out. > It's understandable that Rebble fears someone doing this, since this is what Rebble did. That's an extremely uncharitable take. It's not like Rebble drove Pebble out of…

> It seems what Core wants do here is take what Rebble build/maintained and drive Rebble into irrelevance.

Why do you think that Pebble wants to drive Rebble into irrelevance if they're keeping the app store and Pebble is paying them to do that?

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#224

Post by philipallstar »

protocolture wrote: post #145
apparent wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pebble went out of business but Core is set up very differently. They have an incredibly lean team and Eric appears to have self-funded much of the HW and SW development before taking a dime from customers. There's a chance that some awful fate will befall Eric, of course, but other than that I am not especially concerned that the new company will fold. Eric seems to understand what caused that outcome, and is specif…

It could sell, it could enshittify. Trusting a founder seems daft in the year of our lord 2025.

It sold last time and ensured things kept running in the process.

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#225

Post by Avamander »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #94
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #10

I view this entire thing through an extremely simple, reductive lens: Rebble effectively had free reign on this ecosystem for years, and could have at any time decided to try and capitalize on it further. They still can! But instead they're apparently interested in rent seeking while Core makes real headway. It's clear that Eric and Core want to make something now. It's not clear what Rebble wants, but it's clear the…

Yeah agreed, and I hope the Rebble people read this. They're being very protective and Eric is seemingly trying to include them when he could literally just shut them out. They did good work in absence of anyone maintaining the product, but they're running software on a product they literally did nothing to build.

It's not just running it, they have built on top of it. Embrace, extend, extinguish is exactly what the Rebble team is afraid of. If extinguished and Core goes bust, the community would be left holding the bag yet again. Rebble doesn't want that, why would they.

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#226

Post by joelhaasnoot »

radlad wrote: post #61
modeless wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that is included in their statement that "we’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on storing and hosting the data". If they meant that they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on building a dev portal, patching apps, and the other stuff you mention, they should have said that instead of "storing and hosting the data".

You are choosing a very literal interpretation, which is fine, if you think it is useful. To me, it looks disingenuous and irrelevant. The hosting and storage of that data would have been pointless without this additional development. And arguably, the app store development _is_ part of hosting it.

I think we're talking about 500 updated apps here. You could've done it manually, didnt need a kubernetes cluster

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#227

Post by xeromal »

mmastrac wrote: post #189
apparent wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can you trust someone who's willing to violate your privacy like that? Who's to say he didn't have permission to post from his conversation partner? He doesn't need permission from the people he's talking about (just like we don't need his permission to post about him here).

> Who's to say https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/1p0huk5/comment/npj...

Thanks for providing this

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#228

Post by micromacrofoot »

Avamander wrote: post #225
micromacrofoot wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah agreed, and I hope the Rebble people read this. They're being very protective and Eric is seemingly trying to include them when he could literally just shut them out. They did good work in absence of anyone maintaining the product, but they're running software on a product they literally did nothing to build.

It's not just running it, they have built on top of it. Embrace, extend, extinguish is exactly what the Rebble team is afraid of. If extinguished and Core goes bust, the community would be left holding the bag yet again. Rebble doesn't want that, why would they.

But they wouldn't be extinguished? Core is literally offering to pay them per user and the OS is open sourced... how could they be extinguished under the deal as outlined?

Core could easily say "actually we won't support Rebble at all it's too complicated to maintain this relationship"... and Rebble would then only exist as long as people are willing to maintain the now decade-old original watches... which is a difficult task given the availability of superior hardware from the original manufacturer.

With the Core deal they could actually grow and they get a significantly longer lease on life even if the hardware company fails again.

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#229

Post by trklausss »

pokoleo wrote: post #9

Summarizing the dispute, for anyone interested: Rebble's "one red line" is "there has to be a future for Rebble in there." They fear being replaced/made irrelevant after Core builds their own infrastructure using Rebble's work. They want guarantees that if they give Core access to the app store data, Core won't build a proprietary/walled garden that cuts Rebble out. There's also emphasis on "our work," "we built this…

It is the HashiCorp fiasco all over again. HashiCorp thinks third-party is profiting from Terraform, they relicense, Terraform gets forked into OpenTofu.

Here, Rebble says Core is profiting from their work (hey, look at your licenses). It would be a direct violation of their ToS though, since there is this clause:

> 4. Services Usage Limits > > You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit any portion of the Service, use of the Service, access to the Service, or Content accessed through use of the Service, without Rebble’s express written permission.

So I don't know what to think honestly, I don't see any bad actors here...

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#230

Post by notpushkin »

amarant wrote: post #171
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be totally honest: I have no idea what they possibly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on. That seems totally absurd and reckless.

Seems cheap to me. Host anything and you're gonna need developers. Developers are expensive. A hundred thousand dollars is pretty much what you'd pay for a single developer in a year. 5 Devs is still a small team and that's half a million dollars per year.

There are countries other than the US.
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