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Comment by micromacrofoot | Hacker News Reader

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.

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I've seen you make the comment about the OS being open-sourced a lot. But this largely has nothing to do with the OS. This is a conversation about infrastructure and data. The concern (from what I gathered and will condense greatly) is that Core will take in all the current app data and infrastructure setup, duplicate it themselves, move themselves off of Rebble, and continue developing on it privately.

Which to be absurdly clear - is exactly what Rebble did to Pebble. They scraped the apps and are now mad that someone else could do the same to them.

It is not. If Core wants, they can take the old Pebble dump and start building on top of it like Rebble has. All is fair.

So Rebble wants to benefit from code they didn't write (Pebble apps)... but also wants to prevent Pebble from benefiting from code Pebble didn't write (Rebble updates to Pebble apps)?

This seems a little silly, no? rent seeking behavior for maintaining code they didn't write to begin with?

The fact that Core is not willing to just start from the old dump publicly available already shows that it's not just "rent-seeking". Core clearly wants what Rebble has spent significant effort in not just maintaining but also building.

They're entitled to it just because in some sense Core is a successor to Pebble? No, not really.

Of course it's rent-seeking, akin to squatting — Rebble took Pebble apps developed at no cost to the users, and then maintained them and added cost. In some cases they might actually be required by the licenses of individual apps to open source their maintenance.

No one's actually entitled to anything here on either end (legally), I see 0 work being done to actually contact the original authors to seek permission or licensing details.

AFAIK, there wasn't a blanket license that covered all apps in the ecosystem... so each app would vary. In the absence of a license all rights are held by the original developers.

> Rebble took Pebble apps developed at no cost to the users, and then maintained them and added cost.

Again, if that's all it were, Core could and should just take that old Pebble dump and use that. Why bother Rebble if they haven't done anything as you imply.

I don't think it's equivalent. When Rebble did what they did, it was because Pebble was going under and they had no EOL plan. Rebble took it upon themselves to carry the torch without having been passed it.

If Core were to do the same thing here, it's not the same, because Rebble is still active. You can't kill what's already dead (Pebble), but Rebble is very much still alive.

Why would Core agree to pay Rebble a per user fee if they wanted to destroy them? they could just say "nope you get nothing"

And how would this prevent Rebble from continuing to operate in the event that Pebble failed again?

Open sourcing the OS makes continuity in the event of a failure much easier for Rebble right?

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