Merge pull request #130 from pebble-dev/rebbleAndCore

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Author: Willow-Systems

_posts/2025-10-09-rebbles-in-a-world-with-core.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: Rebbles in a World with Core
+date:   2025-10-9 07:30:00
+author: David, Joshua, and Will
+---
+
+Almost nine years ago, when what was to become Rebble began to emerge from
+the ashes of Pebble Technology, Corp., [David stated a goal for the
+project](https://rebble.io/2016/12/09/rebble-pebble-reborn.html) to "bring
+the many disparate (Pebble preservation) efforts under a single banner,
+concentrating energy and enthusiasm to maximize the likelihood of
+continuance and resurgence of Pebble as a platform."  It's hard to believe
+it's been that long -- and it's hard to believe that it's already been 8
+months since Google [released the original firmware source
+code](https://rebble.io/2025/01/27/the-future-of-rebble.html), and [Pebble
+founder Eric Migicovsky formed a new company, Core Devices](https://ericmigi.com/blog/introducing-two-new-pebbleos-watches)
+... it seems that the "resurgence" that we imagined has truly come to
+fruition!
+
+It's a really lovely moment to take a breath and take a look at how far
+we've come.  We're incredibly proud to have delivered on the promise of
+"continuance" for these nine years -- for longer than Pebble Technology
+Corporation itself, in fact!  -- and to have evolved along the way from a
+loose collection of co-conspirators, to Rebble Alliance, LLC, to our current
+non-profit Rebble Foundation.  It has been a delight and an honor to get to
+serve you -- the Pebble community -- for all these years, and to have made
+good on our promise to keep the dream alive for our favorite little watches.
+
+And it's also exciting moment to look forward to how Rebble and Core Devices
+can partner together in a future for the Pebble ecosystem, and to come up
+with some new promises for you going forward!  So for more on how we're
+working with Core Devices, how we plan to continue to serve you, and how you
+can get involved, read on...
+
+# Core 🧡 Rebble
+
+The awesome developer community that continue to build [apps and
+watchfaces](https://apps.rebble.io) for Pebbles today are what makes Pebble,
+Pebble.  In a world where the legacy Pebble app (just about) hangs on, Core
+Devices are producing new watches running on their app -- and in the mean
+time, other open source apps are being built by community members (hey, a little
+more on that in a moment!).  Fragmentation is a possiblity that
+would result in a less than stellar experience for everyone -- which is why
+we're super excited to announce that we've partnered with Core Devices to
+use the Rebble app store back end on Core watches.
+
+For now, Core Devices's [new appstore](https://apps.repebble.com) is a
+continuation of the legacy Pebble appstore, from the same lineage as
+Rebble's -- and Core Devices and Rebble have agreed to use Rebble Web
+Services as the singular backend.  This means that any apps developers
+upload or update through the [Rebble Developer
+Portal](https://dev-portal.rebble.io) will appear in both appstores!  How
+neat is that?  We've also started on a long list of improvements to these
+services which will continue to be pushed out over the coming weeks -- some
+will be minor bugfixes, others more exciting features.
+
+Because Rebble doesn't produce revenue from hardware sales like Core does,
+and we're not requiring that Core users have a Rebble subscription, we've
+mde it work by agreeing that Core will pay us a reasonable amount to cover
+our costs and to support the maintenance of Rebble Web Services.  Our
+agreement with Core is non-exclusive; if anyone else wants to build PebbleOS
+hardware and use the Rebble app store, hit us up and we'd love to get you in
+on the app store, too!
+
+So -- **if you are using the new Core Devices app, you do not _need_ a
+Rebble Subscription** to use the app store.  If you wish to use Bobby (once
+support is added for the new Core Devices app), you _will_ need to have an
+active subscription.  And we hope you'll continue to have one anyway -- more
+on that in a moment.
+
+# Our promise to you
+
+As Core and other vendors start to produce hardware for RebbleOS, we were
+worried that the ecosystem may begin to fragment.  This is one of the
+reasons that we worked so hard to partner with Core on a unified app store. 
+Access to legacy apps, apps developed since the shutdown and submitted via
+our [dev portal](https://dev-portal.rebble.io/), and new apps created
+through
+[hackathons](https://makezine.com/article/electronics/rebble-strikes-back-with-nonprofit-hackathon-and-os-ambitions/)
+and other efforts should be guaranteed for all devices.  And we haven't
+forgotten why we're all here -- nine years ago, a company that built things
+that we love blinked out of existence, and a community, rather than a
+company, came together to keep supporting them.
+
+So we've been working on distilling Rebble Foundation's mission, and what
+our responsibility is going forward.  So far, what we've come up with is
+something like this:
+
+> Rebble Foundation's mission is to support, promote, and advocate for
+> small, low-power, open-source, user-respecting smartwatches, and to foster
+> a community around them.  Rebble Foundation wants both to do this today,
+> and to be able to do this long into the future, without depending on
+> support from any particular external entity -- Rebble Foundation's primary
+> responsibility is to the users and community that it supports.
+
+We think that it's OK if we work with partners to meet this goal, including
+device manufacturers like Core -- and, for that matter, it's OK if this is a
+little fluid, if it means that we branch into other user-respecting families
+of devices and technologies[^1].  But our responsibility to our users means
+that we have to be advocates for technologies that will outlast current
+manufacturers -- and, for that matter, that could even outlast Rebble
+Foundation!
+
+[^1] What do we mean by user-respecting?  Roughly, we think that a
+technology is user-respecting if it puts the needs of the user, not the
+needs of the manufacturer or developer, first.  By way of examples that are
+informative, but not by any means complete: user-respecting technology does
+not demand or optimize for a user's engagement unless it genuinely helps
+that individual user; it does not create or remove features unless doing so
+directly helps a user, rather than helping a manufacturer.  If a
+user-respecting technology processes a user's data, it does so only in a way
+that helps that user, and it does not transmit a user's data to any other
+party without a user's consent.
+
+Our promise to you is that we'll do our darned best to keep our eye on this
+goal, and to work towards it the best we know how.  We owe our existence to
+you, the community, that cares so much about these watches, and that has
+trusted us to continue that work over the past nine years, and it's our job
+to fight on your behalf to make sure that a community can continue to care
+about little friendly pieces of hardware long into the future.
+
+# Reinvesting in Rebble
+
+Right back at the start, we never could have imagined the success that 
+our subscription service would
+end up experiencing, and that income has been incredibly helpful in keeping
+the lights (and cloud/servers) on — when Katharine and David originally did
+the math, they expected that they would personally have to chip in a hundred
+bucks a month or so to help subsidize the few dozen subscribers we expected! 
+A few hours after our soft launch of [Rebble Web
+Services](https://rebble.io/2018/02/15/rebble-web-services.html), we
+realized that we Rebble might be able to sustain itself after all.  Over the
+past nine (!!) years, we've built up a small cushion of cash, and it seems
+like a good time to reinvest in Rebble going forward.
+
+We're excited to say that we've just this morning gotten a bid back from a
+group that we're really excited to work with on getting [our mobile app,
+Cobble](https://github.com/pebble-dev/mobile-app) across the finish line to
+something that's a beautiful and functional app that you all will want to
+use on an every day basis -- for PebbleOS devices past and future.
+
+All of the work that we've done to continue the Pebble ecosystem has been
+open source because we believe that, together, we can build a Pebble future
+that we love -- and it's paid off in spades (for instance, Maxim's [Timeline
+support](https://rebble.io/2019/07/24/its-timeline-time.html) contribution
+was possible only because Rebble Web Services are open source!).  We think
+that the Pebble community deserves a first-class open source mobile app that
+we can have ownership of, and that we can maintain long into the future --
+so we think it's a no brainer to spend our resources to make that happen.
+
+We've also recently been working on using our resources to get the open
+source PebbleOS release up and running on legacy Pebble Technology Corp
+watches.  We engaged the services of Codecoup -- the maintainers of NimBLE
+-- to help us find a handful of bugs in our implementation of Bluetooth on
+legacy watches, and once we have a moment to breathe, we're looking forward
+to getting back to work on that project!
+
+# Rebble needs you!
+
+We have a lot of things we're working on, but one thing we wanted to be
+clear on is: **Rebble (still!) needs you!**
+
+Here are three ways you can help that would make a huge difference.
+
+**Contribute to Rebble!**  We have so many exciting projects going on!  Are
+you excited about designing the future of the app store, or helping to make
+Cobble beautiful?  Would you like to hone your back-end development skills
+in building paths to submit to the Rebble app store directly from the Pebble
+SDK?  Do you have features that you want to add to Bobby?  These are all
+things that would make a big difference, and it's way easier to get started
+than you might think.
+
+**Run to be on the Board of Directors!**  Rebble is a large community of
+enthusiasts and contributors of all kinds, but the Rebble Foundation is run
+by a Board of Directors, right now consisting of
+Will, [Joshua](https://www.joshuawise.com/), and
+[David](https://ishjr.com/).  These seats are staggered to ensure
+continuity, and we have a seat opening up soon.  Are you interested in
+helping guide the future of Rebble -- or do you know someone who is?  We'll
+be holding elections soon, and we're looking for nominees -- please nominate
+yourself (or a friend!) by [sending the Board an
+e-mail](mailto:board@rebble.foundation) with your name, a sentence or two
+about why you'd like to be on the Board, and a sentence or two about how you
+think you could contribute.  (Although it would be great to have someone
+with non-profit leadership experience join the Board, the only hard
+requirement is that you're excited about serving the Rebble community!)
+
+**Continue your Rebble subscription!**  We have a lot of work that we want
+to do to continue to serve you.  We don't sell hardware, and all of our
+software is free and open source, so subscriptions and our app store
+whitelabel agreement are our only source of revenue.  If you wiant to support
+the Rebble Foundation's goal of ensuring the longevity of the Pebble
+ecosystem in an accessible and user-respecting manner, then please consider
+continuing your subscription.
+
+# Thank you, thank you, thank you
+
+That's about it for now, but you can expect to hear more soon, and more
+frequent blog posts as our activities accelerate.  Thanks for joining us in
+these past nine years.  It's you that's made it worth doing this.  We look
+forward to being involved in the next exciting decade of little joyous
+smartwatch evolution with you!
+
+Your Rebble Board of Directors --
+
+David, Joshua, and Will