And what about a source code escrow agreement, monthly funded by the community ?
There could be clauses such as “if no updates are released for 18 months, then the source code is released by the lawyer under AGPL-3.0-or-later licence” and “if the escrow funding bucket runs out of money, then the escrow agreement is cancelled”
I would be happy to help funding such a thing, as it seems to be the best of both worlds
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But this is assuming you don’t trust the devs already, right?
Like: say the devs were untrustworthy. Then why would they even adhere to this agreement. They could just release a small useless update every 12 months with the changelog “bugfixes” and that would mean they don’t have to release the code.
I get where you’re coming from. But either you trust the devs, or you don’t
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The point of using markdown is to future proof your entire vault. Obsidian could disappear today and you’d still be able to access your vault without issues. Your vault is not reliant on obsidian at all. Your vault is literally a bunch of text files that Chromium (Yes Obsidian is built on the same browser that powers Edge and Chrome) interprets them as html in real time and connects in a specific way.
These connections are not unique to Obsidian at all. There are plenty of other programs that can relink these connections without Obsidian. You can even translate your .md files to html and open them in any browser as you see them in obsidian (as long as you save the obsidian.css or your own css file) otherwise it will look different. You can also convert these links to local file locations after you convert your files to html so you can literally browse your entire vault like a website in any browser.
Either way all your data is indepenant and stored in text files so small you can carry them around on a CD, from 1996. Oh and by the way Chromium is open source, the only thing unique to obsidian are the tools, plugins and gui.
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The obsidian team needs to think about the open source business model. bitwarden, mattermost, plausible, gitlab etc…
It is necessary to use a server that supports e2ee as a self-hosting business model, not an obsidian client. I think obsidian would make more money if they open source the server.
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People are really losing sight of the basic situation here. Obsidian is just a layer. You have possession of your notes and data. The data lives wherever you put it. Obsidian, the company, does not obtain your data. Obsidian, the app, just operates locally to help you manipulate that data.
Let’s compare to other services:
Evernote retains your data behind a proprietary wall. It’s a bit difficult to get your notes out of it to something else. (Not impossible, but only because Evernote offered a path to convert notes).
Jopling is open source, but your notes are still kinda stuck in a local Joplin database. It’s a little bit difficult to get your notes out of that, too. You can’t just take your Joplin folder elsewhere and use it with anything else.
With Facebook, you willingly put your data on their servers. Their ToS clearly states that your posts, images, etc, live on their machines and become their intellectual property. When they say they respect your privacy, they mean that they are transparent with you about how they retain your data and who they sell your data to, so you know (in theory) what you’re getting into before you sacrifice your privacy to them.
Obsidian does not retain or sell your data. They don’t even obtain your data unless you are a paid Sync client. Sensibly, if you are concerned about privacy, the primary discussion would be open sourcing the Obsidian Sync server end. Not the client.
What nasty stuff are they going to do with data they don’t have, though? Obsidian runs locally.
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There is any possibility of at least the core plugins (specifically the Canvas Plugin) to be released as an open source code? I want to do a modification in it that will allow to use bigger Canvases with lower RAM memory (specifically to disable the in-canvas offscreen-rendered Chrome Browser and replace urls by a website thumbnail, and also add a way to download web pages and store them offline since we know most webpages don’t live longer than 10 years)
This is something that can be added by an external plugin or might already exist btw.
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So, please provide me with an open source notes software, he supports markdown, does not use a special format to kidnap your data, and stable profit, stable updates
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Logseq and Standard Notes.
But I’m sticking with Obsidian, personally
Logseq.
@Thibaultmol @Klaas Nitpicking here, but Logseq doesn’t meet the “stable profit” standard because they’re not yet profitable. I don’t think Logseq meets the “stable updates” criterion because every update introduce some severe bugs. This you can check their GitHub repo.
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Zettlr (https://zettlr.com) is the closest thing to your description and the closest in functionality to Obsidian. Except for the profit point because it’s a project that is not intended to be commercial and does not seek any profit.
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Please don’t make these malicious speculations and talk about trust and distrust issues. You look like a funny clown. I can also argue that if you trust software developers, whether it is open-source or not doesn’t make much of a difference. Obsidian is free for individual users, and they are not obligated to provide you with anything. If you don’t trust them, you can choose not to use the software. Isn’t it hypocritical to continue enjoying free services while not trusting them?
If you only want to use open-source software and are willing to pay for it, that’s your choice. But please hold on and firmly refuse to purchase closed-source system software and applications.
I don’t understand why some people insist on demanding commercial software to be open source. What motivates them? If someone believes that software should be open source and thinks it can be better that way, please recommend an open source note-taking software to me. This software should not use proprietary document formats or restrict user data by eliminating folder management.(I don’t believe Logseq is a qualified alternative. Please provide me with an open-source software that is superior to or on par with Obsidian.) Additionally, it should be able to achieve stable profitability and continuous updates. Based on my experience, most open source software rarely provide timely responses to user issues.
I also do not believe that open sourcing has any substantial benefits for ordinary users. After going open source, the income of software creators will inevitably decrease significantly, which means they may not be able to guarantee stable updates. Furthermore, I don’t think those who advocate for open source can make any substantial contributions to the code.
If this software truly has security issues, then even without being open source, you should be able to find evidence to support your viewpoint. If you cannot find such evidence, then even if the software is open sourced, I believe you would not bother to examine it, let alone understand the technical details.
In my opinion, maintaining the closed source status of commercial software may be more beneficial for the long-term interests of users and developers. This ensures that software companies can maintain profitability and continue to invest resources in improving and updating the software, thereby providing a better user experience. If you hold a contrary view, please recommend an open source note-taking software that does not compromise user data, or you can also open source one yourself. I would be happy to have an alternative software.
Death of an Open Source Business Model | by Joe Morrison | Medium
if you give your secret sauce away for free, and it gets popular enough, cloud providers will inevitably spin up competitive services using your very own code against you. They will ruthlessly, unapologetically, shamelessly bludgeon you with a rubber chicken of your own fashioning. They’ll take a dump in your front yard while your lawyer stands over your shoulder whispering, “nothing can be done.”
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And them the cycle of Closen Source continues.
And this is how it works:
step 1: I need a feature and I can implement it, go to step 2
step 2: I can’t implement because I have no source, go to step 3
step 3: I ask a team that blames me because they don’t want to implement it themselves, go to step 4
step step 4: go to step 1
I have been documenting the landscape of software similar to Obsidian, and there is what I call an Extreme Lack of Open Source (ELOS) all around. I think Logseq can fill the gap, but for a while it seems to be growing as a software that don’t listen to the users for adding new features (I created this opinion based barely in the new Whiteboard feature, that don’t seems to be searching for what the users want to have in a whiteboard, but, instead, creating what THey want in a whiteboard). About documenting this everything, all I have seen was a thousand closed-source software and droplets of water in the desert that are open source. Most of them (the closed source) I call “apple shit” (about 60% of this software), not because I think apple is a shit, but because I don’t understand this thing of “you need to have a mac or iPad to use our software”.
The responsibility of any open software will be immense and it will have the potential of becoming the new Blender3d’s equivalent for PKMS. For the others, just remember what Blender3d was 14 years ago, getting only small percents of the market, but now swallowing everything else, and who else would think it would become the reality?
For now, the ELOS feeling continues around…
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oh
welp
Slightly unrelated tangent but Discourse, the software powering the Obsidian forum, is open source underpinned by a commercial business model – they seem to be able to afford to pay their software engineering staff and stay competitive. I would also cite Metabase and Taiga (and hopefully Penpot soon) as similar commercial open source success stories so there are examples where it can work at the small to medium scale.
That said, ultimately I think the community should respect the wishes of the developers – I don’t think that hounding the Obsidian team in the forum is going to persuade them to change their minds and ironically engaging them in this discussion gives the team less time to work on bugs and feature enhancements. Ultimately they’ve made something incredibly useful and it boils down to personal choice whether you use their software and whether you financially support development.
p.s. anyone who is concerned about Obsidian phoning home should run it in a sandbox or use something like Little Snitch or Open Snitch.
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Athens and Dendron all failed. Logseq is a big question mark.
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This thread has been chuntering along since June 2020 - 3 flaming years!
It’s now got to the point where nothing new is being said and people are just rehashing the same old BS 
I love FOSS but we are not going to get a FOSS Obsidian in the foreseeable future! The Devs have made that clear.
So, instead of th8s endless bickering, why not concentrate on helping Obsidian to grow and develop? Produce/improve plugins. Support plugin developers, even a couple of £/€/$/¥ to a plugin dev helps and shows that they are appreciated!
If you want a FOSS Obsidian, well, get off your derriere and make one!
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What does this mean?
It’s a typo of “this”.
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