There may be another side to this story, but it's so far not a good look for Pebble/Core, and this post is well reasoned and written enough that I doubt there are many places for alternate explanations to hide.
Is that legal?
Literally linked in the article at exactly the words in the quote you're replying to.
They link to this as their proof: https://github.com/coredevices/libpebble3/commit/35853d45cd0...
Yes, this is an attempt to nerd-snipe you into giving a marginally more informed opinion, while also shame you for being too lazy to click a single link, but not too lazy to type an entire comment.
Also generally agpl 3.0 is considered a viral license, so accessing it over a network is considered a form of distribution (which is probably why they dont like it) but relicensing it is just a core "nope" type of thing.
(also dual licensing seems like you're relicensing effectively if the purchaser doesn't have to respect the gpl license, but not as clear to me)
If you look at the link they have for proof, the change was GPLv3 to a dual-license AGPLv3 + not-really-specified license you can privately arrange.
They have to respect the original GPLv3 license, which means that Core has to continue to publish all libpebble3 changes under a GPLv3 compatible license, and they do appear to be doing so, even if they also offer a separate license for sale.
I feel like rebble is phrasing this a little misleadingly too. The neutral phrasing here would be "Pebble forked our work, and per our GPL license is continuing to make all their changes available to all users for free. If you contribute to their repo, not ours, they now require a CLA, and for code they write you can also pay them for a difference license (though it's always also available for free under the GPL)"
There may be something that's real here, but "forked our library and added a CLA" feels normal and expected, not worth hostile phrasing.
That being said, libpebblecommon seems to be Apache 2.0. But this part of the diff seems questionable:
> # Copyright and Licensing
Copyright 2025 Core Devices LLC
How does Core own the copyright to this code?
> We made it absolutely clear to Eric that scraping for commercial purposes was not an authorized use of the Rebble Web Services.
> We’d already agreed to give Core a license to our database to build a recommendation engine on. Then, Eric said that he instead demanded that we give them all of the data that we’ve curated, unrestricted, for him to do whatever he’d like with. We asked to have a conversation last week; he said that was busy and could meet the following week. Instead, the same day, our logs show that he went and scraped our servers.
Seriously uncool. I don't really consider myself a part of the Pebble community anymore (despite having two of the OG Pebble) but I'd def lean towards getting legal input on this...
Edit: under what license did rebble scrape the app code? Couldn’t Core Devices scrape it from rebble under the same logic?
> We’ve built a totally new dev portal, where y’all submitted brand new apps that never existed while Pebble was around.
> We’ve patched hundreds of apps with Timeline and weather endpoint updates. We’ve curated removal requests from people who wanted to unpublish their apps. And it has new versions of old apps, and brand new apps from the two hackathons we’ve run!
it sounds like Rebble scraped the original store, built a new API and storage layer, facilitated the publishing of new apps, and kept old apps updated when external changes would've rendered them otherwise unusable. then tried to work with Eric to reach an agreement where both parties could have a piece of the pie in the relaunch.
Well, it's better to figure this out today (that Eric / Core are not so great) rather than a year or two down the line when I'd have already bought a new Pebble. Still sucks, I was excited. Never had one but I want something in the same niche.
Does anyone have suggestions for other good low-capability, long battery, hackable eink watches?
There needs to be a business making money to build the hardware to support this community. I appreciate that Rebble kept the flame alive, but I support Eric and Core Devices in building a business that makes enough money to fund new development of both hardware and software.
It's also strange to me that the Bluetooth commit they point to before claiming "Rebble paid for the work" was actually written by Liam McLoughlin, a Google and former Fitbit engineer. Was Rebble paying a Google engineer?
Scraping data because the original publisher is going under to prevent the data from being lost is very different from scraping data from someone who you are actively trying negotiate with over use of that data.
> It's also strange to me that the Bluetooth commit they point to before claiming "Rebble paid for the work" was actually written by Liam McLoughlin, a Google and former Fitbit engineer. Was Rebble paying a Google engineer?
The claim was that Rebble paid the developers of NimBLE, Codecoup, to assist with integration of NimBLE into RebbleOS
OK, that claim wasn't actually made in the post. I see in a blog post last month they say "We engaged the services of Codecoup – the maintainers of NimBLE – to help us find a handful of bugs in our implementation of Bluetooth on legacy watches". Core Devices isn't selling legacy watches though, and they've been working on Bluetooth since long before last month. Still not clear to me what Rebble is claiming to have paid for that Core Devices is actually using.
Indeed, it bodes rather poorly for the sustainability of Core if they're already behaving like owning everything is critical to satisfying some hypergrowth checkbox. I kind of thought the whole point of the new organization was not to be another startup and to rather to be more like a scaled cottage industry player, making a niche product for nerds and selling it directly to them for a reasonable upfront profit margin rather than depending on collecting rent from a closed app ecosystem to pay the bills.
I was really looking forward to my pre-ordered Time 2, as a Pebble Steel then Time Round owner.
But you cannot do this to Rebble. You just can't, this is unacceptable. Cancelling my preorder :(
There's still a chance for a win here, but looks like the door is closing.
Still keeping my preorder, but damn dude this kinda sucks.
I'm also a bit sad that this is the first we're hearing of this tension, because it likely would've changed my decision to purchase a new Core 2 Duo watch, and I would've preferred this sort of falling out happen before a lot of devices have been purchased.
I think apache is fine for commercial use.
It seems to me the terms of the apache license weren't followed? In there it says to include the apache license file, not throw it away.
(I am not a lawyer)
AGPLv3 seems decent - if you run it on a server, the users of that server can get the software I think.
Let's hope Rebble doesn't get steamrollered. They did good work when the original company failed its users.
The playbook isn't exactly a secret. What you might describe as a "classic walled garden enshittification trap", Peter Thiel and Sam Altman would describe as "monopoly (affectionate)": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REKbaA6USy4 – "proprietary technology, network effects, economies of scale", exactly by the book.
I think the bias towards optimism is commendable but I hope this is the wake-up call the community needs to treat "your love is valuable enough to build a business around" as the Faustian bargain it is and keep Core Devices on a short leash. They want to own you, not work with you. It's their nature.
nobody needs a watch. don't be greedy.
There was a lot of FUD against LGPL that was probably driven by the fact that businesses wanted to slurp up open-source libraries and bundle them into valuable bits of tech without having to contribute back or compensate the library authors.
For those immediately jumping ship: have some patience and observe. You heard one side of the story that yes, someone was frustrated enough to drag all of this public, but that cannot possibly tell the whole story. Please stop escalating the problem by theowing it all away and instead seek to reach out and steer this around instead.
julianlam•1h ago
Fairly certain the Rebble folk know the answer they'll get from their users.
I'm certain the EFF would probably be very interested in pursuing this.
latentsea•1h ago
Unrelated but this always reminds me of the Bushism "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice... can't get fooled again!".