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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While there may not be a public repo for the source code. It is built using Electron, and you can view the source code from the developer’s menu just as if you were using a Chrome browser.
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Your points and delivery of them seem more clown-ish compared to the person you are replying to. Yes, he ignored a bunch of cons for the original creator, including underestimating forks, and extensions doing all pro features for free, but yet, his points are overall valid, and “bro then move out” ain’t a logical point to be made against it, I’m not planning to join a cult, to just “trust” it, and obviously if the statement of “trust us or leave” be said by the obsidian team itself I rather opt out for opensource tools ASAP (which are not dramatically inferior), obsidian should know, without its users and specially its thriving extension market made by specifically “developer” users, it’s nothing more than a copy of 1000s markdowns editors out there, being highly extensible, yet polished, and great mix of preview and text, is the only differentiating factor in my opinion, working with a bunch of these including dendron, which is quite similar, I don’t think there is a big gap, and I think due to huge user-base, if obsidian go opensource, it would absorb many of those developers to work on making what they love, but after first wave of let’s make everything opensource, now there is a new wave of bs reasons of why we shouldn’t go opensource, done by vivaldi and obsidian.
Also there are bugs being find in tools, big and small, everyday.“If it was open source you still wouldn’t find problems in it” is correct 90% of the times, but the 10% of the times is still huge amount of people, and therefore your statement is uneducated at best. openssl and linux are examples of opensource tools which people find bug in them more than multi-billion dollar companies ever could in their own enterprise softwares.
also why should this tool be so complicated at first place so a normal developer cant read it as you mentioned many people wont bother to read, I’m not bossing the team if its complicated, but to me, it seems not that complicated of a project by needs, I assume a sane codebase for it would be navigated and understood in a week or so, maybe some cool trickery be going on in markdown editor pane itself, but rest is underwhelming compared to other tools actually, because its simply a fs reflection, and cool pipelining but nothing perfect or elaborate.
also, this is a list of opensource note taking tools:
- Zettlr
- Logseq
- Standard Notes
- Trilium Notes (personal favorite, exports and imports to markdown vault offline, relax many issues with using system fs as the vault, the only problems are being underpolished (WIP vibe) and fewer extensions)
- Dendron | Foam (+ vscodium, very similar)
- Notesnook
- QOwnNotes
- SiYuan (Looks like notion opensource replica)
- VNote
- Org-roam (+ emacs)
so before bashing people by “you clown”, which you shouldn’t at first place, educate yourself.
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You cited Dendron. You know its development has stopped right? Interestingly you didn’t list Athens? What happened there I’m curious.
If all of the benefits of open sourcing are so great, and so amazing, why do Athens and Dendron all failed? You listed many other tools Logseq. What’s your opinion of its development?
Logseq is open-source yet it took them a year to fix a serious bug. Though to your point, the fix did originate from an outsider. They sat on that pull request for a month or so. And then then it took them a few more weeks to review that pull request, and when they implemented it, it broke lol. And it took them another week or 2 to actually fixed it. Really. You just need to go to Logseq’s GitHub issue to how big of a mess it is. Most of their bug reports are closed because they expired after 1 year of no activity.
Now you seem like a technical person, go to Logseq Discord server, ask them how you can seriously contribute to the codebase, and receive a “go read Logseq documentation about how to contribute”, and tell me how you feel.
Logseq taught me what is “open-source” in name only. If you think other tools are not that much inferior to Obsidian, then go use it, and tell others who think like you to contribute to the app you’re using. You now have thousands of developers against a team of 6 or 7 people, isn’t it a guaranteed win? I hope I will be able to ditch Obsidian to use that app one day.
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First, let’s discuss my use of derogatory language. I suggest you quote his words directly in a straightforward manner. To be frank, what he posted was very disturbing, though superficially about trust, it was extremely malicious in speculating and leading, and contained ill intentions. I was blamed indiscriminately without regard to context, which also reveals some of your own issues.
Moreover, the Obsidian team would naturally not publicly quote my words, because they are clearly wise. This point is beyond doubt.
Second, let’s explore the issue of open source. First, an important premise must be clarified: currently, the Obsidian team does not have plans to open source, because they are so intelligent, every step they take is perfectly correct. It’s too complex to discuss security issues here, you can fully block Obsidian from accessing the internet through firewall software. As for how open source software can be profitabilizing, as a competitor, they naturally hope Obsidian becomes open source so they can freely plagiarize. However, as a user, I’m most concerned that Obsidian would lose the ability to sustain profits, and thus be unable to guarantee stable updates.
Of course, you can wax lyrical about open source business models, because even if you fail there is no loss for you. But in truth, for those slightly informed, the business models for open source software are nearly collapsed. A common business model is “open source software + charge for services”, however cloud service providers are gradually strangling this model. Another way open source software generates profit involves selling services, including support, customization, and consulting for the code. However, Red Hat’s example shows us this path is also difficult. Therefore, before waving your flags and shouting, please first find an actually viable new model. Or why not have those who support open source jointly sign an agreement with Obsidian, clarifying Obsidian’s potential, and guaranteeing that if Obsidian is unable to achieve expected profitability after open sourcing, you are willing to take on a certain amount of liability?
Finally, let’s review the note taking tools you listed. May I ask if you have fully understood the needs I proposed? If you truly understood, you certainly would not have recommended these tools to me. Or rather, perhaps you have not personally experienced the software you recommend, setting aside their features, how many can ensure stable updates? Before making recommendations to others, I hope you can first have sufficient understanding, rather than simply copying and pasting.
I don’t want this comment to get buried. Remember when a million beggars stormed the headquarters of Microsoft and demanded they open source Microsoft Office and PhotoShop? If anyone does, they may have to adjust the dosage of their meds, because that never happened. Open source is amazing for sure and I use a lot of it, but only because (mostly) volunteer developers got to work and produced alternatives. It wasn’t driven by users crying about an existing product.
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