As a former pebble user, why would I throw more money at a company created by the same guy?
Fool me once...
this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2025
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Wait so is this about the app catalog? Because Rebble appears to be MIT-licensed open source, which means Eric can fork it and use it, even not contribute his changes back.
Either way I think we deserve some response from Eric on this.
Depending on Core’s dialogue from now on, I’m cancelling my preorder. Pebble is either FOSS or it’s dead.
This is a weird response. From the sounds of things, Rebble essentially “stole” at least a large number of the apps in question from the original developers, and now claims that data as their own. Going so far as to charging for access. Which makes no sense at all.
I back this viewpoint also. I'm not sure how Rebble could justify indefinitely charging for access to apps that they scraped from Pebble. Eric's response satisfied me that Core is not morally wrong. Some people are so willing to have a knee jerk reaction.
Apparently this is not about software licensing so much as about the services Rebble provides:
Core would spearhead the development of brand new watches, and we’d be there to provide our Rebble Web Services to go with them.
It now seems Core wants to just keep on using these services as their own. I read a few paragraphs but I gave up when they go back 9 years to explain it all.
But this isn't the first time a company tries to steal what isn't theirs, under the auspices of FOSS, and my benefit of the doubt definitely stands with Rebble here.
Here is Eric's response: https://ericmigi.com/blog/pebble-rebble-and-a-path-forward
Reading this seems... fair? And there's evidence to back him up it seems?
Claiming that someone stole what you stole is a little hypocritical. Not having a Pebble, and having discovered them just after they were shut down by Google, I'm glad Rebble did what they did. But claiming ownership seems a little over the top. Having an archive of apps available via a third-party site sounds like a win for both parties, except for the financial side. Certainly, not paying anything would be a benefit for RePebble, and not having an option to charge anything would be a loss for Rebble, but it sounds like an unmitigated win for Pebble and RePebble users.
RePebble seems to be very committed to going FOSS, up to releasing some or all of their code as GPL3, which is hard to argue around. I'll be revisiting this saga in 6 months or so when I'm in the market for a smart watch.
I would've liked to believe Eric was the nice and honest guy he comes across as in his videos...
Why can't it ever be that simple? Just once.
Doesn't fill me with much hope, especially after my 2 Duo pre-order was cancelled because they found out there weren't enough parts.
I had one ordered before but the more you look at the specific language this guy uses, the more clear it becomes that he was not in it for anyone but himself. The community exists to finance his pet project.