Having read through this thread and spent a fair bit of time stalking the Discord server, I think what makes Obsidian stand out is just how kind and approachable and friendly the devs are. For that reason, I don’t have any security hesitations about Obsidian, and I don’t think this should be the main argument for open sourcing it.
What makes Obsidian unique compared to some of the other alternatives suggested here is the community, I think. There is such a lively and welcoming community, and the plugin ecosystem is super healthy and useful.
I completely understand why open sourcing Obsidian as is is not something that the devs want to do, but on the other hand I think a lot of people are putting time and effort into the community, which to me is Obsidians biggest selling point. For that reason, I think it would be really reassuring if there was some sort of commitment to switch to a more open model in the long term.
I think a great first (and possibly last, if full open sourcing is not something that the devs want) step would be to try to open source one of the “core plugins”, sort of like a test to see whether the community might actually be able help the core of Obsidian. The devs or well-respected members of the community could head the project, ensuring that the code is of high quality and well-integrated into the Obsidian UX. I would suggest the ‘Graph View’ core plugin to be open sourced, since the community seems particularly fond of it and there are lots of possibilities for improvements being suggested, which the devs might not have the time to look into as they are spending their time improving other Obsidian Core features like mobile and sync.
This turned out to be longer than I wanted it to be. TL;DR:
- Open source a small part of Obsidian (suggestion: Graph View) to test whether the community could be helpful in developing some of the Obsidian native experience.
- Start small such that the ‘administrative’ burden of managing the open sourced part is not big.
- Reevaluate with the community on whether this was a success in a few months time.
Advantages:
- Demonstrates that Obsidian takes seriously the thought of opening up further
- (Ideally) Obsidian would be able to use community to aid in development in a time-efficient manner
- Helps sustain the healthy community of Obsidian, which is arguably its biggest selling point
- Low risk, both time and intellectual property wise.