TL;DR
- Team of developers who kept Pebble watches afloat after the company’s shutdown now accuse the founder of “stealing” their work.
- While Rebble and Core Devices had initially agreed to work together, the former now claims to disagree over the terms.
- Rebble alleges that Pebble’s founder, Eric Migicovsky, could build a “walled garden,” restricting further open-source app development.
After almost nine years of hiatus, the no-frills Pebble smartwatch is being revived. Pebble’s founder, Eric Migicovsky, shared an update earlier this month, revealing that 70% of the Pebble 2 Duo units have already been delivered, while the remaining orders are either in transit or scheduled to be shipped in the following days. In addition to this, Migicovsky has also relaunched the Pebble app store for early backers to enjoy new watch faces, apps, or games on their latest watches. While this is a positive development for Pebble fans eagerly waiting to relive nostalgia and cherish the same minimal smartwatch experience as the last decade, a newly emerged roadblock may stall Pebble’s recent progress.
The new hindrance comes from Rebble, a community of developers who gave the classic Pebble watches another chance at life after the company’s official closure in 2016. Rebble played an enormous role in Pebble’s upkeep and revival. After the company shut down, Rebble took the necessary steps to create an unofficial PebbleOS spin-off, called RebbleOS, and maintain an unofficial app store for Pebble watches. The same store now forms the basis of the reinvented Pebble brand, under its new name, Core Devices.
Following Google’s steps to release the PebbleOS source code and Migicovsky’s steps to revive the company, Rebble and Core reached an agreement, allowing the latter to use Rebble’s service as the backend for the new app store. This would also allow any apps added to the Rebble store to be automatically reflected in the Pebble Store. However, the Rebble team has now shared an update, alleging that Migicovsky has demanded complete control over their work.
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Stating that their “agreement is already breaking down,” Rebble said that Migicovsky has demanded all of their work from the past decade be handed over “so that they could do whatever they want with it.”
Rebble says that Core wants “unrestricted access” to all the data the community has maintained over the years. This, Rebble alleged, would give Core the ability to build a private Pebble App Store that completely replaces it and “build a walled garden app store around” the community’s labor. The team further adds that while Migicovsky verbally committed to not making any such changes, he hasn’t been eager to put it in writing.
The team further adds that Migicovsky has further demanded that Rebble’s store be taken offline and their domains redirected to the new Pebble app store instead. It also alleges that Migicovsky scraped its servers, further insinuating a rift between the two parties.
Rebble says an uncontrolled and unrestricted ecosystem is vital to keep Pebble watches alive if it were to go down again or be acquired for the second time, only to be killed off once again.
The Rebble team has further demanded a legally binding agreement from Core Devices before sharing the data. While Rebble fencing off its assets from Migicovsky shouldn’t impact any existing apps on the Pebble app store, this might impede new apps or watch faces from being added to the store. We’ve reached out to Migicovsky for a comment and will update the story when we hear from them.
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