These are all interesting and I think, were good points to reflect on. Yet, they don’t resolve the contradiction inherent to Obsidian’s approach. If you look at things from the perspective of a user (which I suppose most people on this forum ought to do as it appears Obsidian as an organization, is two people at the moment) then you have a lot of motivation for the tools you use to be free and open source software (particularly in Obsidian’s phrasing, this “incredibly personal” case).
Why?
First, regardless of whether Obsidian ever accepts changes from anyone outside of their organization, you can be sure that the code of the application is available if indeed someday the company dies/gets bought by people with bad intentions/etc. and that means there is at a minimum, the potential for someone else to continue it in its original form. And you/us as users to feel some confidence that our work with this tool will not be inconveniently disrupted. Anyone migrating to Obsidian from another tool, probably has dealt with such pain.
Second, fundamentally, users retain the freedom to use our computers and applications as we determine (as opposed to having it controlled by a third-party)–that’s a basic and ethical courtesy to users. It communicates respect.
Having the code available, sure a competitor could fork it and offer their own product but that would only really matter if Obsidian were trying to make money from selling licence seats, which it isn’t… the benefits of paying for their model is mostly that you receive support and insider access… that has nothing to do with licence seats of software. Competitors offer similar products and services already, this is kind of a non-issue. In fact, depending on the type of open source licence used, “competition” can be turned into a useful thing.
I say this stuff, again, because I think Obsidian is great. I would like to adopt it. I would like to pay for their services. I cannot do that without an ethical licence that respects my user rights and efforts, which based on Obsidian’s own statements, it seems like they’d agree with. Why not take the stance to its logical and accurate conclusion and offer an open source application?