The original smartwatch 'Pebble' is back, but the development community and its creator are at odds
Pebble, the smartwatch launched on the crowdfunding site
Rebble · Core Devices Keeps Stealing Our Work
https://rebble.io/2025/11/17/core-devices-keeps-stealing-our-work.html
Migikowski launched Pebble in 2008. In 2012, he launched a Kickstarter campaign and successfully raised over $10 million (approximately 1.55 billion yen) from over 68,000 people worldwide. However, Pebble sold part of its business to Fitbit at the end of 2016 and shut down its service. Pebble founder Migikowski explained why Pebble failed, and his thoughts are summarized in the article below.
The founder of the smartwatch 'Pebble,' which came before the Apple Watch, explains why it failed - GIGAZINE
The unofficial project 'Rebble' was created to enable Pebble, whose service was terminated and some functions were no longer available, to continue using it, and Rebble supported the Pebble community until Pebble was revived by Mr. Migikovsky.
In October 2025, after Pebble's revival, Rebble announced a partnership with Migikowski's newly established Core Devices, the official relaunch of Pebble. Core Devices partnered with Rebble primarily because of Rebble's large developer community and app store. Under the agreement, Core Devices would pay Rebble a monthly fee of $0.20 (approximately 31 yen) per user for its services.
However, in November 2025, Rebble published a blog post stating that 'Core Devices continues to steal Rebble's work,' criticizing Mr. Migikovsky and Core Devices.
'Since our inception, Rebble has worked to keep the Pebble experience alive, maintaining the app store, building new services like Bobby , and providing front-line support for those who continue to use Pebble. But instead of working with us, Eric and Core Devices have demanded that we hand over all of the work we've done over the past decade to them and let them do what they want. Eric's latest newsletter also doesn't tell the truth about where the work that powers his business comes from. We would have loved to collaborate with them to build something great together, but we've reached an impasse. So now we're asking the community what we should do with Core Devices,' Rebble wrote, claiming that Migikowski and Core Devices are trying to steal all of Rebble's contributions to the Pebble community.
In particular, they point out that the Pebble app store currently provided by Core Devices has been supported by Rebble for nearly 10 years since Pebble's service was discontinued. In fact, 100% of the data supporting the app store is provided by Rebble. They also point out that the Pebble app store has evolved over the 10 years since Rebble's support, becoming far more comprehensive than it was at the time of its closure. They emphasize that Rebble has patched hundreds of apps, including updates to the timeline and weather forecast endpoints, and has responded to all removal requests from developers who wished to remove apps.
'Core Devices also wants to provide new Pebble users with access to an app store powered by Rebble, and both Core Devices and Mr. Migikovsky agreed to this. Rebble explained that its reason for wanting to provide an app store is because it wants 'confidentiality to ensure that Core Devices does not attempt to build a closed app store by tying up Rebble's past achievements.'
However, Rebble pointed out that Core Devices has not agreed to this. 'Core Devices has maintained that it wants unlimited, free access to the data that Rebble has put so much effort into archiving, curating, server-managing, and maintaining its relevance. If Core Devices were given the right to freely access the app store data, they would simply build their own app store and replace Rebble, leaving the community with nothing,' Rebble argued.
Rebble alleges that while Migicovsky verbally maintained that there were no plans to build its own app store, when asked in writing, he refused to provide any written guarantee that he would not build one. With the contract in limbo, Rebble then proceeded to scrape Rebble's app store, thereby breaching the agreement.
Rebble claims its goal is to make Pebble community-driven, rather than Core Devices-driven, which would make it easier to keep Pebble afloat even if official issues arise, like last time.
However, Rebble stated that 'we believe that Rebble belongs to the community,' and that the choice should be made by the community. The remaining options were to 'actively protect Rebble's achievements from Core Devices and continue to work toward the survival of the community' or 'let Core Devices do as they please.'
Rebble said, 'If Eric and Core Devices would legally promise to cooperate with us instead of kicking us out, we would be happy to accept that,' and hoped that Core Devices and Mr. Migikovsky would make concessions to Rebble.
In response, Migikowski wrote in his blog that 'Rebble is misleading the community with false accusations,' claiming that Rebble's blog is misleading the community.
Pebble, Rebble, and a Path Forward
https://ericmigi.com/blog/pebble-rebble-and-a-path-forward
'Rebble claims to own 100% of the app store data, but in fact it is trying to enclose data on 13,000 apps developed by individual developers and uploaded to the Pebble app store between 2012 and 2016,' Migikowski said. He pointed out that not all of the app store data was created by Rebble. He also pointed out that the data Rebble holds is scraped from Pebble's app store data.
He added, 'I am committed to keeping the Pebble ecosystem open source. I believe the content in the Pebble app store should be freely available and not controlled by any particular organization.'
Regarding the conflict between Rebble, Migikovsky, and Core Devices, the following comment was made on the social message board site Hacker News:
'Developing Pebble as a public ecosystem rather than 100% free and open source software is a foolish move at this point. It would be foolish for Eric to do so in any way, and it would be foolish for Rebble to do so in any way. If Eric or anyone else wants the app store data, we'll give it all to them and wish them luck. Meanwhile, the community needs to continue doing what it's been doing so far: working on a fully open source, community-first solution with the full approval and support of the community. Proprietary solutions are always a dead end, so don't waste your energy fighting or thinking about them. Let's keep pushing to public repositories .'
Another user said, 'No matter what happens to Core Devices and Rebble, I just want choice and ownership. As long as Core Devices doesn't make it difficult to compile and load your own firmware from FOSS source and provides a shortcut to interface with new hardware via Bluetooth / Wi-Fi / LoRa etc. using the FOSS SDK or CLI tools, I, as a customer, won't mind any problems. The pursuit of more hacking possibilities and options is why I backed Pebble on my first Kickstarter , and the lack of complete freedom and choice in everyday wearable devices on the current market is why I've only been using analog watches for the past five years or more. '
Another commenter said, 'It's best to focus on getting users to want to run open source alternatives rather than proprietary first-party solutions that may or may not emerge.'
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in Hardware, Posted by logu_ii