Eric responds to Rebble claims and defends Core’s approach

Pebble’s comeback is hitting a rough patch. After a scathing blog post from Rebble accusing Core Devices of overstepping its bounds, Eric Migicovsky has issued a detailed public response denying the claims and calling for more openness in the ecosystem.

Two sides of the same revival

At the heart of the dispute is the legacy of the original Pebble platform. Rebble has spent the past seven years maintaining the ecosystem after the company behind Pebble folded. Core Devices, led by Pebble’s original founder, has recently launched new hardware, bringing Pebble back into the spotlight. The two groups had agreed to collaborate, but that partnership is now unraveling.

Rebble’s post painted a picture of a relationship gone wrong. They described months of frustrating talks, unfulfilled promises, and what they view as a pattern of Core Devices benefiting from their work without properly crediting or including them. They claimed Core scraped their servers, rebranded shared infrastructure, and at the end of all of that pushed for full control of the app store data.

Now, Eric has responded. In his words, Rebble’s version of events is inaccurate and unfair. He says his intention from the start has been to preserve Pebble’s open ethos, not to build walls around it. He argues that the apps and watchfaces on the old Pebble App Store were created by independent developers and shouldn’t be treated as property of any one group.

The core disagreement

While both parties claim to support open access and community-first values, their views on control and ownership differ sharply. Rebble believes their rebuilt infrastructure, much of which was created after Pebble’s shutdown, should be protected from being absorbed or altered by a third-party company. Core, on the other hand, sees Pebble’s legacy as something that belongs to the wider community, not to Rebble alone.

Eric rejects the idea that Core took anything improperly. On the claim that they used open source code developed or funded by Rebble, he says Core Devices either wrote their own libraries or legally acquired the rights to use them. He confirms that Core bought the copyright to part of the libpebblecommon codebase and made their modified version available under GPL-3.0. Furthermore, he also pushed back on claims of scraping, saying the tool he used was a manual interface to view and pick watchfaces, not an automated scraper.

He says Rebble changed their mind about a key provision in their agreement, which involved sharing an archive of legacy Pebble apps. In his view, this is core to keeping the platform open. He also expresses concern about relying on a third-party service for something as central as app delivery, especially when Core is trying to support actual customers who expect features to work without uncertainty.

Community caught in the middle

The split is already spilling into Pebble forums, Discord, and social media. Many longtime users sympathise with Rebble’s position, pointing to years of unpaid volunteer effort and the group’s commitment to open infrastructure. Others argue that Core is simply trying to move quickly to deliver working products, and that Rebble’s rigidity is holding things back.

Eric’s blog acknowledges that the clash of perspectives may be partly due to the different operating models. Core Devices is a small commercial operation with actual shipping deadlines. Rebble is a non-profit that doesn’t move at the same pace. But that difference has led to growing distrust, especially around issues of licensing, contribution control, and long-term stewardship.

Where this goes next

Both sides still express some hope of working together. But it seems the tone has shifted. Rebble has floated the idea of legal action if Core continues to use their infrastructure without terms in place. Eric, for his part, says the door remains open but stresses that he cannot depend on Rebble’s systems without guarantees.

There’s no doubt that both parties care about Pebble’s future. Eric has taken financial risk to reboot the platform and hardware, while Rebble has sustained the community through years when there was no official support. What’s unclear is whether they can find a shared path forward.

For now, Pebble’s second life remains very much alive, but messier then was originally hoped.

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