alt Hacker News> Yesterday, Pebble watch software was ~95% open source. Today, it’s 100% open source. You can download, compile and run all the software you need to use your Pebble. We just published the source code for the new Pebble mobile app!
Except...
> Another important note - some binary blobs and other non-free software components are used today in PebbleOS and the Pebble mobile app (ex: the heart rate sensor on PT2 , Memfault library, and others). Optional non-free web services, like Wispr-flow API speech recognizer, are also used. These non-free software components are not required - you can compile and run Pebble watch software without them. This will always be the case. More non-free software components may appear in our software in the future. The core Pebble watch software stack (everything you need to use your Pebble watch) will always be open source.
So 100% FOSS, except for the parts that are closed source now, and any that they add later.
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Part of this is driven by necessity, for example, cellular network chips are typically binary blobs, etc. as mentioned, the heart rate sensor is a binary blob and that's likely because there are no good OSS solutions for those components.
A lot of battery firmwares are closed source, the way that they fixed this for the early pinephone was literally just staring at a memory listing and aiming a heat gun at the battery to see how it reacted when it went hot.
Yeah, but it's running on a device that has closed source blobs in it. Hell, even the linux kernel often has firmware blobs for wifi devices.
I'm not sure if you're splitting hairs or not. I definitely thought this post would be about them finding open source alternatives to binary firmware, but if it doesn't interoperate with optional non-free software then it is not Open Source.
It seems to be comparable to debian, and that's as open source as it gets.
They don't really have a choice with those modules
The important thing is that all the code written by Core Devices is open source. They can't force third parties to open their code, but they're opening all of their own work. And that proprietary code is not required to use the watches. Most of them don't even have heart rate sensors, and clearly Memfault is not required. They're committing to maintaining a 100% open source version that still allows you to use the watches with minimal compromise.