TLDR PR2 is in production!! See all the strap options What you need to know about Pebble Round 2 Address confirmation email instructions FAQ Pebble Round 2 i...
Long story short, fitbit bought pebble when pebble grew too fast and was not maintainable (to be fair, despite the mistakes made they were open about it and were extremely fair to customers), then google swoop in and bought fitbit, but not to do anything good or bad with it (i guess just to absorb a competitor or take users’ data). The community kept the pebbles running, a tough job but worth it. Eventually out of whatever goodness or lack of interest or whatever reason google decided to open source all the pebble stuff to allow the community to continue building and supporting the devices.
Eric migikowski, founder of pebble, came back to release new watches building on top of all the community work to maintain old pebbles alive. This time he has corrected their path. They are more lean and careful with growth and they are basically building everything as open source, in a way as a way to give back to the community as it was their effort that made the come back possible. But also in an effort to future proof all the devices and avoid the same issues from happening again.
Personally I love the brand and the products. It really shows that the founder, the devs, the community… they are all in this because they want those devices for themselves, not just to sell a product. That’s the situation to the best of my knowledge, everything is open now and the devices are great.
Google did not open source anything of the pebble code, it was partially opened by Fitbit, and the rest reverse-engineered by the community (particularly the plugin store and rebble back-end). Open source ppl did magic to keep the OG pebble going as long as it did.
And Eric made a lot of blog posts explaining this away, but it’s still not clear why he chose to try to take open source code for himself and his company.
I personally don’t really trust Pebble after that, and that’s a choice for everyone, but don’t misunderstand what happened there.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I got something wrong, although I am pretty sure there was something released by google that was fundamental to the possibility of relaunching pebble as a commercial project with new hardware. Which is very different from the huge effort that went into supporting the old watches, the old app and all the reverse engineering that went into it. So allow me to retort that I feel like maybe what you are talking about is from way earlier than the code released I mean. That is not to say you got it wrong, I think you are correct on what you said, just a different topic really.
i would want to provide some information from pebble people (maybe it was migikowski that mentioned it in his blog at some point?) about the released code from google but on a (very) quick search what I found is the explanation from google itself of what they released. Notice that it is from 2025. Way later than the whole fitbit stuff.
https://opensource.googleblog.com/2025/01/see-code-that-powered-pebble-smartwatches.html?m=1
About your second point, sincerely I wanted to avoid that whole thing in the quick summary I tried to make. Not because it might not be important but because I wanted to keep things in more simple terms. But it might be good to mention it to keep everyone informed of past issues. On that topic I would like to add my own opinion on the whole topic which is I feel a bit a bit overblown out of proportion.
I will make special emphasis that this is my view on the topic as an outsider with no real skin on it either way other than really liking the watches and having released a couple watchfaces in the old days under my own name and being a developer of many others under a group of developers together.
The whole drama that happened between migikowski and those that were taking a lead role in the community to support old pebbles and keep the store content alive was simply a sad case of bad and or lack of communication. Neither side acted or reacted in a proper way (easy to say for me now, in the heat of the moment I’m sure I could have made similar mistakes). I think both sides expressed their point of views and the reasons for some things, and after that I wasn’t left with a feeling that neither was more right or wrong. There’s some things that could be critized about Eric but closing off code? There was no instance of that that I can remember, he did scrap the data from the store but good reason or not, he had one, and the fears expressed by those holding the data felt a bit extreme to be honest. As a dev with code in that store, neither side really represented me, and so what if eric was scrapping the data? That’s the thing with open stuff, people can go and get it, the community scrapped the same data in the past to save it too. My code was there and I left it there for everyone, the community, but also someone like Eric.
After the dust settled and the moods calmed down, there was literally no damage done from one or others, the platform is more open than it has ever been, the apps and watch os are all now open source, they have been collaborating all together… so accusing eric of not knowing what open means feels just as naive as thinking he is a perfect guy incapable of mistakes. I personally see him as a bussiness guy, and that comes with bad sides, but in a general sense, he seems to be at the very least interested in doing some good things that align with my interests and very important, capable of admitting mistakes. The whole drama that happened though, even if it didn’t really prove bad intention on his part, it did prove he had a pretty bad reaction to a sligthly overprotective community and I will say, that wasn’t really a good color on him, just not bad enough for me to consider that pebble is being led the enshittification path.
Well sorry for the wall of text. Felt it was important to try and express my point of view on that as I skipped it the first time.
The whole drama that happened between migikowski and those that were taking a lead role in the community to support old pebbles and keep the store content alive was simply a sad case of bad and or lack of communication. Neither side acted or reacted in a proper way (easy to say for me now, in the heat of the moment I’m sure I could have made similar mistakes).
I’m gonna stop you right there.
I had a couple of pebble watch faces and created a weather plugin in the Rebble store. We were notified by email that Migicovski had attempted to change the license of the Rebble store and backend (which is illegal, BTW). Later, it came to light that the new Pebbles were being demoed with plugins that looked like they were lifted from the original Rebble store.
They were. Migicovsky had attempted to scrape the Rebble source and web front end, and was seemingly about to pass off all the work as Core’s own.
I won’t stop you from enjoying the new Pebble, but the lack of respect and attempt to coopt the code is real, and it should tell you something about Migicovski’s dim view of open source.
Again, you’re free to like Pebble, I don’t care. Just please stop this “misunderstanding” nonsense, Core knows what they’re doing. “Oh, sorry, we thought the code was ours.” isn’t acceptable.
There are smartwatch diy kits, and there are some that can be flashed to a different, more open firmware. Last I checked, I hadn’t found any with heart rate monitors.
For me, the appeal of the pebble (I have an old one) was very simple functionality of telling time and notifications from my phone.
Long story short, fitbit bought pebble when pebble grew too fast and was not maintainable (to be fair, despite the mistakes made they were open about it and were extremely fair to customers), then google swoop in and bought fitbit, but not to do anything good or bad with it (i guess just to absorb a competitor or take users’ data). The community kept the pebbles running, a tough job but worth it. Eventually out of whatever goodness or lack of interest or whatever reason google decided to open source all the pebble stuff to allow the community to continue building and supporting the devices.
Eric migikowski, founder of pebble, came back to release new watches building on top of all the community work to maintain old pebbles alive. This time he has corrected their path. They are more lean and careful with growth and they are basically building everything as open source, in a way as a way to give back to the community as it was their effort that made the come back possible. But also in an effort to future proof all the devices and avoid the same issues from happening again.
Personally I love the brand and the products. It really shows that the founder, the devs, the community… they are all in this because they want those devices for themselves, not just to sell a product. That’s the situation to the best of my knowledge, everything is open now and the devices are great.
You have a couple things wrong here.
And Eric made a lot of blog posts explaining this away, but it’s still not clear why he chose to try to take open source code for himself and his company.
I personally don’t really trust Pebble after that, and that’s a choice for everyone, but don’t misunderstand what happened there.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I got something wrong, although I am pretty sure there was something released by google that was fundamental to the possibility of relaunching pebble as a commercial project with new hardware. Which is very different from the huge effort that went into supporting the old watches, the old app and all the reverse engineering that went into it. So allow me to retort that I feel like maybe what you are talking about is from way earlier than the code released I mean. That is not to say you got it wrong, I think you are correct on what you said, just a different topic really.
i would want to provide some information from pebble people (maybe it was migikowski that mentioned it in his blog at some point?) about the released code from google but on a (very) quick search what I found is the explanation from google itself of what they released. Notice that it is from 2025. Way later than the whole fitbit stuff. https://opensource.googleblog.com/2025/01/see-code-that-powered-pebble-smartwatches.html?m=1
About your second point, sincerely I wanted to avoid that whole thing in the quick summary I tried to make. Not because it might not be important but because I wanted to keep things in more simple terms. But it might be good to mention it to keep everyone informed of past issues. On that topic I would like to add my own opinion on the whole topic which is I feel a bit a bit overblown out of proportion.
I will make special emphasis that this is my view on the topic as an outsider with no real skin on it either way other than really liking the watches and having released a couple watchfaces in the old days under my own name and being a developer of many others under a group of developers together.
The whole drama that happened between migikowski and those that were taking a lead role in the community to support old pebbles and keep the store content alive was simply a sad case of bad and or lack of communication. Neither side acted or reacted in a proper way (easy to say for me now, in the heat of the moment I’m sure I could have made similar mistakes). I think both sides expressed their point of views and the reasons for some things, and after that I wasn’t left with a feeling that neither was more right or wrong. There’s some things that could be critized about Eric but closing off code? There was no instance of that that I can remember, he did scrap the data from the store but good reason or not, he had one, and the fears expressed by those holding the data felt a bit extreme to be honest. As a dev with code in that store, neither side really represented me, and so what if eric was scrapping the data? That’s the thing with open stuff, people can go and get it, the community scrapped the same data in the past to save it too. My code was there and I left it there for everyone, the community, but also someone like Eric.
After the dust settled and the moods calmed down, there was literally no damage done from one or others, the platform is more open than it has ever been, the apps and watch os are all now open source, they have been collaborating all together… so accusing eric of not knowing what open means feels just as naive as thinking he is a perfect guy incapable of mistakes. I personally see him as a bussiness guy, and that comes with bad sides, but in a general sense, he seems to be at the very least interested in doing some good things that align with my interests and very important, capable of admitting mistakes. The whole drama that happened though, even if it didn’t really prove bad intention on his part, it did prove he had a pretty bad reaction to a sligthly overprotective community and I will say, that wasn’t really a good color on him, just not bad enough for me to consider that pebble is being led the enshittification path.
Well sorry for the wall of text. Felt it was important to try and express my point of view on that as I skipped it the first time.
I’m gonna stop you right there.
I had a couple of pebble watch faces and created a weather plugin in the Rebble store. We were notified by email that Migicovski had attempted to change the license of the Rebble store and backend (which is illegal, BTW). Later, it came to light that the new Pebbles were being demoed with plugins that looked like they were lifted from the original Rebble store.
They were. Migicovsky had attempted to scrape the Rebble source and web front end, and was seemingly about to pass off all the work as Core’s own.
I won’t stop you from enjoying the new Pebble, but the lack of respect and attempt to coopt the code is real, and it should tell you something about Migicovski’s dim view of open source.
Again, you’re free to like Pebble, I don’t care. Just please stop this “misunderstanding” nonsense, Core knows what they’re doing. “Oh, sorry, we thought the code was ours.” isn’t acceptable.
Oof, that, no warranty, unfixed design issues, etc. are tough. Are there even any alternative open source smartwatches with heart rate tracking?
There are smartwatch diy kits, and there are some that can be flashed to a different, more open firmware. Last I checked, I hadn’t found any with heart rate monitors.
For me, the appeal of the pebble (I have an old one) was very simple functionality of telling time and notifications from my phone.