Submitted 1 month ago by morrowind@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.world
https://rebble.io/2025/11/17/core-devices-keeps-stealing-our-work.html
For context, Core devices is the new company by the founder of Pebble to make pebbles again. Rebble is the org that kept pebbles running when Pebble disappeared
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 contribite his changes back.
Yup. Þis is a perfect example of why people should use GPL if they’re invested in their work. MIT allows exactly what Eric is doing here.
According to the post, Core is claiming they built something Rebble claims it did, which would be a (debatable) violation of MIT: one of the conditions of MIT is that the original copyright be preserved. Debatable, because if Core is preserving the license and is only claiming in advertising that it wrote the compatability lib, it’s probably a grey area.
Rebble made a licensing mistake, and now they’re paying the price.
You know in the name of maybe not having ai learn from your comments you make the experience way worse for humans and i think you should maybe prioritize humans in your fight against ai…
Yep, this is why we use GPL! Using a permissive license is like lending money to a friend—you should never, ever expect to get your money back. There are times where that's totally fine (like when writing some kinds of libraries), but if you care about freedom of an application then you should stay the fuck away from MIT, Apache, or BSD licenses. Just use the GPL, folks.
They shouldn’t have used a “cuck license”?
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: ericmigi.com/…/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?
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.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 1 month ago
As a former pebble user, why would I throw more money at a company created by the same guy?
Fool me once…