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

Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

ericmigi.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 258 posts

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#81

Post by radlad »

modeless wrote: post #18
radlad wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subscription fee was what enabled them to host these services. From their blog post, they mention spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on infrastructure and software. I expect that the connections and skills involved in running the Rebble web services don't directly translate to creating a hardware product. That said, I think you are right that Rebble is feeling left out - and that it is hard to figure out e…

Core doesn't want Rebble's data. They want the data from the original Pebble store, which is not owned by Rebble. It's the work of thousands of independent developers and it should be shared freely, not kept in a walled garden with "no scraping" terms added on. It's actually offensive that Rebble is using other developers' data (that they originally scraped from Pebble) as a bargaining chip in their contract negotiat…

I don't think that's quite right - Rebble has updated a number of these apps to keep them supported. As sibling commenter posted, the original apps are available publicly.

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#82

Post by c22 »

margalabargala wrote: post #64
shreddit wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rebble sounds pretty much like a non profit to me > The Rebble Foundation is a non-profit organization that keeps the Pebble community alive. rebble.io https://rebble.foundation/

They aren't a 501c3. When I wrote my original comment I did a search for Rebble among all 501c3 ores and they are not there. I looked closer after your comment. They appear to be a "Michigan Domestic Non-Profit Corporation". Why aren't they a 501c3? I have no idea. It makes me trust them less to be honest, that they are some sort of nonprofit but not a 501c3.

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.

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#83

Post by [deleted] »

margalabargala wrote: post #75
apparent wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both Rebble and Core Devices are for-profit companies, neither is a non-profit, so I'm not actually sure which you're referring to here. Looks like Rebble is now a nonprofit? > have evolved along the way from a loose collection of co-conspirators, to Rebble Alliance, LLC, to our current non-profit Rebble Foundation [1] 1: https://rebble.io/2025/10/09/rebbles-in-a-world-with-core.ht...

I did some digging in a reply to a sibling comment. Basically, they are not a 501c3. They are a Michigan state specific nonprofit. My original comment was made after a 501c3 search turned up nothing. I don't know why they would decline to be a 501c3 and instead only be a Michigan nonprofit.

[deleted]

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#84

Post by gorbachev »

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…

Core went bankrupt once doing exactly what they want to do now. I think the concern users will be left holding the bag, again, is reasonable.

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#85

Post by notaustinpowers »

radlad wrote: post #69
jjfoooo4 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the risk you run when you contribute work to open source. Unless there’s an accusation that Eric / Core is violating license, I don’t see a lot of merit to Rebble’s position.

I think you're 100% right WRT the open-source code Rebble developed publicly. The big open question right now seems to be about the private app store data Rebble archived (and further developed) - which looks legally murky to me.

I think the main sticking point is this:

  ‘We’re happy to let them build whatever they want as long as it doesn’t hurt Rebble’
Eric mentions that they want to release free weather APIs so apps that show weather don't need to require the user to add an API key. As well as voice-to-text transcriptions. Rebble offers both of those services as a paid subscription. That would hurt Rebble's bottom line.

At the end of the day, Rebble built a business on top of scraped Pebble App Store data & open source code. They continued to keep their code open source. Eric paid fees to gain the rights to any code that wasn't open source.

The Pebble App Store data was never theirs. The underlying Pebble code was never theirs. The common library isn't theirs, Eric bought it from the maintainers.

It really does suck that the Rebble developers could lose a decent source of income. But that's what happens when you build your business on open source technology that you don't own.

But also, they must have some big balls to claim that all of the data they scraped from the Pebble App Store is THEIR data. I'd like to see the agreements from the pre-Rebble devs attesting to that.

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#86

Post by Wowfunhappy »

radlad wrote: post #16
renewiltord wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear why the community refuses to make the app store archive public. It's an archive of other developers' work. Doesn't make any sense to say "you can only get these from the Rebble website". Just do requester-pays on the S3 bucket.

The concern is that it will be imported into a separate app store owned by Pebble, which Pebble will lock Rebble out of (i.e. block scraping and refuse to release this data), and then if Pebble goes bust again, Rebble is left with less than they started with. As I understand it, they almost came to an agreement on this: > We want to give Core’s users access to the Rebble App Store. (We thought we agreed on that last…

So then what Rebble should be asking for is a (written, legal) promise that Core’s app store will also be public.

This feels like it shouldn’t be difficult to hash out.

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#87

Post by stavros »

evil-olive wrote: post #47

this part of the response doesn't pass the smell test for me: > Accusation 4: ‘[Eric] scraped our app store, in violation of the agreement that we reached with him previously’ > Here’s what happened. I wanted to highlight some of my favourite watchfaces on the Pebble Appstore. Last Monday Nov 10, after I put my kids to sleep and between long calls with factories in Asia, I started building a webapp to help me quickly…

Scraping has a very clear meaning here, that of exfiltrating data to store. If he just loaded some images to memory so he could pick favorites, that doesn't fit any definition of scraping I'm aware of.

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#88

Post by philistine »

Zetaphor wrote: post #50

If you're looking for an alternative to all of this, the BangleJS v2 is both cheaper and more hackable than the Pebble watches. It doesn't tick all of the same boxes, but it's performed well for me over the last 6 months. Here's what it offers: * Screen is fully visible under direct sunlight * With the screen always on the battery lasts me well over a week * Heart rate monitor * EXTREMELY hackable, everything can be…

Don't remove that little tape that prevents the watch from shocking you with 3 continuous volts of electricity!

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#89

Post by apparent »

c22 wrote: post #82
margalabargala wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't a 501c3. When I wrote my original comment I did a search for Rebble among all 501c3 ores and they are not there. I looked closer after your comment. They appear to be a "Michigan Domestic Non-Profit Corporation". Why aren't they a 501c3? I have no idea. It makes me trust them less to be honest, that they are some sort of nonprofit but not a 501c3.

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.

Well, if they portray themselves as a "nonprofit" then most people who read that will think they are a 501c3, which is almost always the case. I don't know why they don't qualify for that status (if they don't), but it's possible that it's a reason I would care about when deciding whom to side with on issues like this one.

The battle of for-profit versus non-profit comes across differently than for-profit versus Michigan Domestic Non-Profit Corporation (which for some reason does not qualify for IRS nonprofit designation).

Re: Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward

#90

Post by apparent »

gorbachev wrote: post #84
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…

Core went bankrupt once doing exactly what they want to do now. I think the concern users will be left holding the bag, again, is reasonable.

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 specifically looking to avoid making the same mistakes.

Post reply on HN