> It was a failure of business management, not ethics.
Yet he exited in a way that left his customers high and dry. You claim he made no money off of the sale?
> A few contributions don't give Rebble ownership of all that firmware code
I didn't say that it does. Eric chose to fork the codebase that includes those contributions so they clearly added value.
> He credits Rebble all the time.
>> Instead, we’ve built a new open source library called libpebble3. This library is ‘batteries included’ - designed to provide everything you need to build a Pebble companion app except for the UI. It’s a single cross platform (iOS, Android and desktop) codebase written in Kotlin Multi Platform (KMP). We’ve licensed libpebble3 under AGPL-3 with an optional commercial exemption for integration into a proprietary codebase. Learn about this strategy.
I see someone taking credit here, not giving it.
If Eric manages to find a way back on-side with Rebble, he may get abother chance. Otherwise he has already alienated a significant part of his target market.
He had no way of continuing to support his customers without money. I doubt he personally made more than a token amount on the sale, liquidation preferences and all that. If selling out was his goal he could have sold out for a whole lot more money a year prior and chose not to.
> they clearly added value
A tiny amount compared to the whole, Core Devices' own contributions are larger, and the firmware remains open source! Nothing was stolen!
As for Eric giving credit to Rebble:
repebble.com: "This was also made possible by the Rebble team and community, who have supported Pebble since it shut down"
Eric's YouTube: "thanks to the clever work of Liam, one of my past Pebble colleagues and avid Rebble contributor, we switched to using an open source BLE stack called Nimble."
Eric's blog: "thanks to Rebble for keeping everyone engaged with a product that hasn’t been on sale since 2016!"
More on Eric's blog: "For the last 9 years, the Rebble Alliance has been keeping the Pebble dream alive. [...] I’m a huge fan" "Without the community or the OS, there is zero chance that these new watches would be possible! Thank you Rebble!"
Yet more on Eric's blog: "I’d like to thank [...] The Rebble Alliance - they’ve been keeping the Pebble torch lit in the intervening years, and (hopefully) continue nurturing and empowering the community years into the future."
Eric's social media: "Thank you, Google and Rebble! I can't stress how thankful I am to @pebble_dev (http://Rebble.io) and Google, in general and to a few Googlers specifically, for putting in tremendous effort over the last year to make this happen. You've helped keep the dream alive by making it possible for anyone to use, fork and improve PebbleOS. The Rebble team has also done a ton of work over the years to continue supporting Pebble software, appstore and community. Thank you!"
libpebblecommon consists of 5362 lines of Kotlin code. libpebble3 is 25578. Core Devices has done by far the large majority of the work even here, and Eric has heaped copious praise on Rebble repeatedly and consistently. If he didn't specifically write in a blog post that he's specifically thankful for this specific bit of code, that's a really weak criticism.
> libpebblecommon consists of 5362 lines of Kotlin code. libpebble3 is 25578. Core Devices has done by far the large majority of the work even here, and Eric has heaped copious praise on Rebble repeatedly and consistently. If he didn't specifically write in a blog post that he's specifically thankful for this specific bit of code, that's a really weak criticism.
I am sorry but I expect only pointy hair bosses to "measure impact" using lines of code. I expect better from our community.
> He had no way of continuing to support his customers without money.
I don't see how you could possibly know this. Personally, I highly doubt that there was no other possible exit that didn't do a better job of taking care of his customers and supported the community. HE could have open sourced stuff, made sure the app store was backed up, etc.
> the firmware is still open source
Oh, I guess since one thing nobody is complaining about is true, then all their other comlaints are moot.
The value here isn't in the source code, certaibly not in the additions made by a 5 man company. The value is the community that has kept itself alive while maintaining and creating the resources that are giving Core Devices any chance of success.
Nothing was stolen, but a lot of good will was lost.
Edit: I see you've substantially edited your comment without any note yet again.
Yet he exited in a way that left his customers high and dry. You claim he made no money off of the sale?
> A few contributions don't give Rebble ownership of all that firmware code
I didn't say that it does. Eric chose to fork the codebase that includes those contributions so they clearly added value.
> He credits Rebble all the time.
>> Instead, we’ve built a new open source library called libpebble3. This library is ‘batteries included’ - designed to provide everything you need to build a Pebble companion app except for the UI. It’s a single cross platform (iOS, Android and desktop) codebase written in Kotlin Multi Platform (KMP). We’ve licensed libpebble3 under AGPL-3 with an optional commercial exemption for integration into a proprietary codebase. Learn about this strategy.
I see someone taking credit here, not giving it.
If Eric manages to find a way back on-side with Rebble, he may get abother chance. Otherwise he has already alienated a significant part of his target market.