You must log in or register to comment.
I don’t necessarily like a few takes in the comments here.
Vibes wise the Obsidian team seems to be great and they don’t seem to have shown any reason why I should distrust them. I love FOSS but gifting others my work doesn’t put food on my table, so in that sense they need to have a lucrative business model which they seem to have established.
I could use SyncThing, Git or other solutions to do synchronisation between my devices but I choose to buy their Sync offer, since I want to support them (they also have EU servers, which need to be GDPR compliant by law afaik).
The closest comparison I could make is NextCloud. NextCloud open sources their software, but they sell convenience. Sure, you could self host it, but paying them to do so for you may be more attractive. In comparison Obsidian is not really complicated to set up or maintain. It’s literally just a MD-editor. So the only convenient thing to sell is synchronisation if you don’t want to put a price tag on the software.
If they open source all their code, some tech wizard will implement a self hosted obsidian sync server with the same convenience as theirs in a day, and the company will lose their revenue stream.
We’ve all been burned by tech bros in one way or another, but I think it’s ok for people to profit off of their IP. And they seem to be doing so with a positive vision. Feel free to let me eat my words if they ever go rogue, but that’s my 2 cents.
it’s ok for people to profit off of their IP
Absolutely. I just have trust issues with closed source software and platforms. Burned too many times.
If they open source all their code, some tech wizard will implement a self hosted obsidian sync server with the same convenience as theirs in a day, and the company will lose their revenue stream
Obsidian is storing everything as plaintext files. Those convenient selfhosted sync solutions have been out there for years.
It’s not just about syncing files. It’s also the fact I can edit stuff on my tablet and see the changes in almost real time on my laptop with Obsidian Sync. I believe most other solutions wouldn’t play nice with such a workflow.
With the vault stored on a synchronized cloud drive, Proton/Google/etc the same thing happens.
I tried Obsidian, but it didn’t give me anything extra on top of using Helix with Marksman, dprint and git. 1% the ram usage of obsidian, versioning, auto-formatting, link auto-complete, page pickers/traversing, global search, etc. there’s literally no reason to use more electron bloatware.
I basically use Markdown files for anything i would’ve done in Word, and python streamlit + pandas + csv files for anything done in Excel (and capable of handling millions of rows more performantly)
I couldn’t get work to pay for it so I found a better, cheaper alternative, Notesnook. It’s open source (client and sync server), you can publish notes, and it’s end-to-end encrypted.
I just wanted to toss out another thanks for mentioning Notesnook. After a week I’m completely won over.
It says it’s free, but then there’s a pricing and plans page?
A lot of alarm bells ringing for me about that app.
Notesnook is free. It is developed under gpl https://github.com/streetwriters/notesnook
It’s always been free for me using Mobius Sync…
Not the point here. Using it in a commercial environment for free was a violation of the terms, now it’s not anymore.
Ah got it, thanks for the clarification.
It’s interesting that a closed-source app has good reputation among FOSS enthusiasts. Surely they are not a Microsoft or Apple, but still who controls your computer, you or them?
It stores your data in plaintext, and simply uses the program to parse special formatting characters. There are no attempts at obfuscation or encryption, and it doesn’t lock you into a walled garden that refuses to play nice with other programs. The program itself is closed-source, but anyone could write an open source version to parse the same info… There just hasn’t been a good reason to do so. Even if Obsidian as a company and program ceases to exist overnight, your data is still safe on your machine and can be read by anyone who cares enough to dig into the file. Hell, you can even open it as the plaintext file and dig through it manually.
I’ve been really enjoying trilium as an open source alternative but fair warning it’s not as polished as Obsidian
I just cant wrap my head around why they’re willing to go so far to gain good will from people by having such a generous free tier, but somehow licensing the code under a FOSS license is out of the question??
Why not just go all the way and make sure everyone who cares about reading the souce could also give you free contributions?
Yep and the Android app is full of small things to improve, for sure someone would put in contributions for free
Now that it’s free, are its users the product?
Nothing else is changing. No account required, no ads, no tracking, no strings attached. Your data remains fully in your control, stored locally in plain text Markdown files. All features are available to you for free without limits.
“…until we have a large enough userbase to start monetizing and enshittifying…”
They have a plenty large enough user base and have not done so. You’re literally commenting this on a post of them doing the exact opposite. The fear mongering is insane.
It was nothing personal, more of an off-handed commentary on how things usually end up going after 20 years of seeing literally every site/service I’ve used and most of the companies I once considered “the good ones” eventually get shittier in some way when the business side puts on the squeeze.
The one exception I can think of is Wikipedia.
But I don’t have any reason to think badly of these folks, their current owners seem to have their hearts in the right place and indeed have made decisions that avoid lockin and assure users, and I hope they are another Wikipedia that will endure the tides of enshittification.
But I will never again assume that such hopes will remain the reality, even in this case. This is a snapshot in time. Owners change, priorities change, pricing models change, file formats change, common sense statements of basic decency like “don’t be evil” get rescinded, scrappy fun websites created by free-thinkers become tools of fascist oppression.
That doesn’t mean they don’t deserve your business and support currently. Just make sure your off-ramp options remain acceptable if things begin to change.
