Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised by this comment; after the drama last week and after seeing this I fully have to side against Rebble.

The nature of driving a healthy open source centered ecosystem is that you don't control it under your iron fist: you make good contributions, users _and_ companies are able to use them in all new ways which comply with the licensing terms. And it seems that RePebble is going way beyond the licensing terms requirements, but bending over backwards to honor Rebble here when they aren't actually required to.

I just can't imagine what people want from RePebble if not this: they are being maximally open, making it so all of everything would be able to continue if they went out of business tomorrow, while also actively enabling people to continue using Rebble's store and paid offerings. Should they be forcing users to use Rebble's offerings (instead of making things even more open) as a reward for doing a good job bridging the dark age?

I agree, and Rebble themselves highlight how inflammatory their initial blog post was in their most recent one: https://rebble.io/2025/11/24/rebble-in-your-own-world.html .

They also backed down from their ludicrous position that they are acting as protectors of other people's watchfaces being downloaded in bulk by a particular company they don't like, whereas they are totally fine with the watchfaces being publicly available for general use. It clearly reads as them trying to clutch control of the one thing they haven't open sourced.

Rebble contributors did have a legitimate gripe, which is that they were lead to develop some additional software under the idea that there would be an agreement at the end of the day. But the Rebble Foundation's response to this was totally immature and irrational.

I agree with what Eric said in his follow up, which is that it is quite concerning to engage in a partnership with an organization which reacts like this as part of a negotiation process. God knows I wouldn't, and it doesn;t surprise me that an alternative solution was found.

Well said and exactly my thoughts on it as well. Eric has done more than he really had to, and it is unclear to me what rebble really wants/is positioning for.

Nobody is saying it out loud. But as always, it’s probably about money.

My impression is that there is a lot more going on than just the facts provided by both sides. Core technologies managed to get Katie Berry to step away from the project[1] and that's extremely significant to me. Her tireless dedication to keeping Pebble alive (and get it open sourced) is how any of this is possible. For her to just up and leave now tells me that Eric and Core are not being as magnanimous and friendly to community as these blogs posts and actions might suggest.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/1ozzsr9/an_update_o...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/1p0huk5/pebble_rebb...

Both of those comments seem to just boil down to "Core probably could be more proactive about comms", which hardly seems like a particularly egregious sin.

"interactions with Core have gone so poorly that they were adversely impacting my mental health"

That seems a little more serious than "could be proactive about comms" especially when this is one of the key people responsible for a lot of the original Pebble tech, rebble tech, and working within Google to get the Pebble OS open sourced.

I think unfortunately this is a normal thing that happens: passionate people get very attached to something and have trouble dealing with dispute even when everyone is relatively good intentioned. I've seen it in the workplace a dozen times.

You are not really factoring in all the work on the hardware, much of the software, and the entirety of the financing, which is being done by Eric and the Core Devices team.

If Rebble wants to take the risk and put out a smartwatch, there is nothing stopping them. Infact all of the open sourcing work Core Devices has done gives them a good starting point.

He gave them a deal that would directly send cash their way, which he didn't have to do at all. The vast majority of founders wouldn't have touched that with a 10 foot pole.

This seems like an overly harsh take.

> They deserve credit which they won't be able to claim anymore.

Why won't they be able to claim credit for the work that they did the past because of other people's work in the present?

> Also, to me, Eric talking doesn't sound authentic, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's lying. I don't mean to insult though, mad respect for putting project like Pebble together.

What the heck are you trying to do here if not insult him? It seems wild to say he sounds inauthentic and you think he's potentially lying, and then try to hedge by saying that's not intended as an insult.

From Eric’s previous blog post, he did not “cash out”:

> I earned almost nothing from Pebble Tech Corp. I paid myself a $65,000 salary each year. I did not get any payout through the asset sale.

Eric also made a pretty detailed writeup a few years ago about what drove the failure and acquisition of the original Pebble company: https://ericmigi.com/blog/success-and-failure-at-pebble