Also the Any Association’s model is extremely similar to Obsidian’s. It solved the open licence issue with its Any Source Available License, which they also explain here.
Thibaultmol, being open doesn’t necessitate accepting and managing community contributions; it makes that an option under the developers’ full control.
You’re not wrong. Technically. But realistically, it does create that expectation. So you’ll have a lot of community members screaming at the devs saying “why aren’t you doing this change, here’s my code fix” (devs don’t bother with the PR) “THE DEV TEAM DOESN’T CARE, THEY WON’T EVEN ACCEPT MY CHANGE”
Is what would happen I’m afraid
Haven’t read all of this missive, but the published (open) api permits community plugin developers to do just about anything in Obsidian.
To me, the model of core being sacred and intellectually protected with an open published api represents the ideal balance to everyone.
Open for the sake of open offers no merit and no value to the millions of folks using Obsidian.
Most of this missive is nothing more than rantful noise.
Why not open source Obsidian to improve privacy, transparency, and community contributions?
at this point: read the the previous messages. This point has been discussed a lot already, please read it
I think if Obsidian’s life cycle comes to an end in the future, this thread will still live on…
But that doesn’t make sense. PRs and community participation are in no way tied to being open source, not even in the culture of Open Source in my industry (K8s).
Rancher and many others are open source but don’t have to deal with that. They basically don’t take PRs which is fine because folks almost never offer one. They could even just offer a single source for the source code which doesn’t allow for more than viewing or cloning. Then the community can see the source but don’t even have the tooling to make proposals… though maybe that would drive folks to the forum? Anyway, I know I don’t see those sorts of complaints from the opensource tools who’s repos I live in.
Sometimes I have folks who want to PR the tool my company publishes but we don’t take PRs and I tell them so. If the PR addresses an issue which is prioritized, we link to it in the actual issue/feature request it addresses and the devs can take a look if they want and sometimes that’s useful. On the hard ones they can get inspiration from it, but we never actually use a community PR. The community doesn’t follow our standards, write tests for their code in the greater system (and when they do, it’s never as developed as our own), and honestly… there’s the issue of quality and coherence of our codebase. Our users respect that and I’ve never ever seen anyone yell “THE DEV TEAM DOESN’T CARE, THEY WON’T EVEN ACCEPT MY CHANGE”, though some do have their complaints about how long it takes when they’ve already provided some solution. If anything it saves us dev cycles because the devs don’t watch the issues in the repos that they aren’t focused on. My team and other teams do that if we so choose.
Maybe it’s a different culture but that fear feels a bit disconnected to me.
i think there’s a difference between the tool you’re referring to and something like Obsidian.
Obsidian is like 95% personal use. People don’t understand the idea of an open code project that doesn’t allow pr’s.
So a LOT of them are going to lash out and be like I WANT TO IMPROVE THEIR SOFTWARE AND THE DEVS ARE ***** FOR NOT ACCEPTING MY PR.
While you’re (maybe more B2B tool?) has less regular people and more professionals that understand it.
That makes an unfortunate sense, except that I’d hope that anyone that wished to submit a PR was a programmer and familiar with how these things worked, so less likely to lash out. Either way, we’re still dealing with assumptions, and I still don’t think it would be that hard to just lay down the law and have just a place where the code is posted but not in a repo so folks can’t fork and PR. You could have it published in a github page rather than in a github repo, or viewable upon request with an automated request process. Filter only the most tech savy users in such a way that they pass through a gateway with a prompt laying out the fact that this is for info only and that the project itself is closed while the code is open. If someone wants to modify Obsidian, refer them to the docs for plugin dev.
Basically, this still feels like assuming the worst about the community. There are ways.
What a thread… Can’t believe I read the whole thing.
Honestly, thanks to the moderators for not closing this thread and allowing room for discussion. If trust in Obsidian is a factor for some, this openness is, for me personally, a positive sign.
First of all, I am happy with Obsidian as it is. However, that doesn’t mean I couldn’t be more satisfied (which, I understand, is subjective).
The primary reason I stopped using apps like OneNote is privacy concerns, not necessarily due to feature differences (although I do prefer Markdown now). I think that, even if not the majority, a considerable number of people are switching to Obsidian for privacy reasons (just my guess, not a fact).
I’m not saying I only use apps if their source code is available to the public, but it is definitely a major factor when I’m considering my options. Apps like Bitwarden, Filen, and Signal have their source code available, which is a huge plus for me.
That said, Obsidian is still superior to open-source note-taking alternatives for my personal needs. Could this be because Obsidian is closed source? Maybe, or even quite possibly. However, I don’t think that should be a reason, in the long run, to not consider making the source code public.
Now, I’m neither begging nor demanding that the developers make this move—I have no right to do so. But I do think that suggesting open-sourcing is a fair point, or at least worth discussing, especially with a product that emphasizes security and privacy in its marketing and design. I personally don’t store any crucial personal information in Obsidian and don’t intend to, but that doesn’t mean the information I store is negligible or that I don’t want to ensure it is stored securely.
I have no problem paying for a product, especially if it’s one I use frequently and really like. I’d be fine if Obsidian went open source and chose not to accept PRs or contributions, and even disabled issue reporting. I don’t think that should be considered a must. I would just appreciate the ability to look at the source code.
Yes, I am a full-time developer, and yes, I use a lot of open-source programs. I also try to avoid “FAANG” companies and their services, and I constantly strive to prioritize privacy and security. This may not represent the majority of users, but we do exist, and for people like me, seeing Obsidian open-sourced would be a significant benefit—and I take this approach not only with Obsidian but with every app I choose to install.
I’m not saying closed-source apps can’t be secure, nor am I implying that all open-source apps are secure. But I would confidently suggest that open-source apps have an edge.
Why did I bother posting?
I think some points that the developers made are addressed in this comment (as they were although mostly addressed already in previous comments). I’m not saying they should, but maybe someday they might (re)consider going open source.
If done correctly, going open source could be the extra mile, or the icing on the cake. I understand the business risks the developers are considering, and that complying with every single user’s preferences is impossible. However, I believe going open source could attract a percentage of users who prioritize open-source alternatives and are currently not using Obsidian for this reason. In this sense, it might even be a good business move.
I’ll just leave this here, since the independent audit from December 2023 might be of interest for some of you: Security - Obsidian and I believe it hasn’t been linked on this thread yet.