There’s been a bit of drama in the Pebble community lately, but it seems we’re heading in the right direction. Today, Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky shared an update on the future of the Pebble Store—and it’s very good news.
Last week, the folks behind Rebble—a group dedicated to maintaining the old Pebble App Store and watches—came out with some very strong words and accusations against Eric Migicovsky. They claimed he stole their work and refused to commit to an agreement that would ensure their existence. Migicovsky defended himself against these accusations, and in a new blog post of their own, Rebble softened on their stance.
A lot of the drama revolved around the Pebble App Store. Rebble claimed they owned all the data, and they feared Migicovsky would make it a walled garden. That’s based on the fact that in the original run, hardly any of the Pebble software was open source, which made it nearly impossible for the community to maintain things after the original company shut down.
Earlier this year, Google open-sourced the PebbleOS, but that didn’t include the mobile companion app or App Store. That’s been fixes, and now 100% of the Pebble software experience is open source. Even if Core Devices vanished into a black hole tomorrow, all the source code needed to build, run, and improve the software that makes the watches work is available to the community.
Migicovsky admits that some of the recent controversy around Pebble’s open source nature was due to his Android bias. It’s easy to sideload the old Pebble app and continue using it on Android devices, but that left iPhone owners stranded in the rain.
In regard to the App Store, which has been at the center of the recent discourse, Migicovsky announced that the mobile app will soon be able to subscribe to multiple app store “feeds.” There’s an “official” Pebble App Store feed already, and this makes it possible for the folks at Rebble to create their own feed with all of their data. Users can then essentially choose which app stores they want to pick from.
Migicovsky says that one of the main questions he’s been asked is about long-term support, which is understandable considering how the original devices fared. This time, the entire system—from the hardware to the operating system to the app store—is being built to be repairable, open, and community-maintainable, which is a good thing for everyone.
Source: Eric Migicovsky