Commercial license required?

Help
1

I’m using Obsidian in conjunction with $DAYJOB, to manage my own personal notes and a daily to-do list.

  • Obsidian is not an officially sanctioned tool, the company doesn’t know (or care?) that I’m using it on my own workstation.
  • As far as I know, I’m the only person in the company who uses it (although the company has over 80K people around the world, so it wouldn’t surprise me to be wrong about this).
  • If I leave the company, the license will stay with me rather than the company, since I’m the one who paid for it.

Am I still required to pay for a commercial license?

To be clear, I just paid for a license anyway, and if it turns out I’m not required to have one, I’m not going to ask for a refund. I already feel like I’ve gotten more than $150 worth (catalyst plus commercial) out of the software in the last two months, I just want to be sure - and it might also be good to add some more clarifications on the web site.

2

From the site linked:

Commercial Use Licenses are required whenever Obsidian is being used for work for an organization with two or more employees.

Since the company you work for has more than one employee, you require a license.

There are two exceptions:

Work for educational purposes does not require a Commercial Use License.

Not for Profit License, for registered charitable and not-for-profit organizations

3

I am an “employee” rather than a contractor, so I can’t claim to be a one-person organization who just happens to only have one client.

I do occasionally mentor other people, but not enough to feel justified in calling it “educational purposes”.

And the company I’m working for is very much the opposite of “not-for-profit”, although you might not know it from their stock price over the past year or so.

I guess it’s good I bought the commercial license earlier then.

5

The company’s intention and knowledge of the use case (or business reason) seem to be the main concerns. One scenario is that the corporation never intended to utilize Obsidian formally and might not even be aware of the benefits it provides in a professional setting. However, a commercial license can be necessary if the business is aware of Obsidian’s advantages and is aware that workers are using it for work-related tasks.

On the other hand, a personal license or free use may be adequate if the firm finds no commercial need for Obsidian. This is just my opinion, therefore I might be wrong.

6

You are both wrong, a commercial license is required if Obsidian is used for work-related purposes, be it to-do lists or notes about a specific work tool.
The company does not have to be aware of this.

If the company is not aware or does not want to provide the license one has to purchase the license for themselves.

Personal use means that one uses Obsidian for things that are unrelated to the job.

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7

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