closed-source products are also audited, I worked on proprietary products audited by governmental agencies and big companies, this is often the case in the enterprise realm.
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Open source dev gets angry that Amazon and other big companies are using his software for free, comedy ensues:
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This idea would go a good distance toward alleviating concerns about longevity.
I noticed recently that the Vivaldi web browser (based on open source Chromium and other FOSS projects) does something that might be useful for Obsidan to consider. Vivaldi uses and contributes to those projects (so they publish those additions) but they also have a layer of work (their interface and special features), which are not licensed as open source. From what I understood, they still publish that code for anyone to see, they just do not enable people to reuse/redistribute it under an open source licence. So I suppose people might learn from, might possibly suggest bug fixes or whatnot, but couldn’t fork it.
It strikes me that if Obsidian did that in combination with a pledge to open source upon discontinuation, it might address many (though not all) of the concerns that people requesting open source code would hope for. Obsidian could keep it’s existing business model based on a proprietary licence as is but allay many of the worries that people currently have.
I’m not necessarily suggesting this is the best idea but if it hasn’t been considered, might be worth thinking about.
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New user. Just wanted to also put my request in for open sourcing Obsidian.
Wonderful app! Thank you devs!
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Another person here who would pay monthly for Obsidian if it were FOSS. I was disappointed to find out that Obsidian isn’t FOSS and that the developers have such an uninformed view on the matter.
Thanks to all the people listing alternatives in this thread! I’ll be checking those out.
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Hey, just a new user here.
Want to say it’s really good application and I really appreciate the work developers doing.
But I’m really don’t get a point, why they’re strongly trying to avoid opening their project? I saw dev’s reply in 2020, but it doesn’t make much sense, in my opinion.
We live in the complicated world, and I can’t and won’t blindly trust anyone with closed source code. If someone’s interested read articles and opinions from Richard Stallman, founder of GNU, GPL licenses etc. And if you want so, you can dig dipper after that. Because it’s all about freedom to choose, contribute and inspect, because I want to know in 100% what product am I using exactly.
Don’t get me wrong, this app looks and feels smoothly, with community plugins it already became a really huge player on the scene. But everyone who reads this, always do your own research whatever you want to do and use.
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I’ve started using Logseq if anyone’s wondering. I like it even more than Obsidian and it’s FOSS with a huge community and developer base. 
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Obsidian can earn more money by donating.
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Hi, I just created an account to add my voice to this topic, because I really like Obsidian, but it being closed source is what kills it for me. So I switched to Logseq as well. I hope the devs listen and consider switching to open source.
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This is actually hugely disappointing. I was planning on supporting Google Drive in iOS and fixing a few bugs I have found, thinking that Obsidian was actually open source. What a disappointment to discover it is not open source at all. I thought it was licensed, but still open source…
This is really heart breaking, cause I was getting used to the tool. I’m seriously considering switching to something else (probably Logseq), in order to reduce the big risk of something potentially happening to the company behind Obsidian that would put at risk my notes and workflow.
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I am someone who has used pretty much all of the open source apps in this category before I found Obsidian. After a few weeks of use I paid for the license. I usually try to stick to open source but wanted to support the developers so this app keeps going. Between the app itself and the community of users and plugins I think there is nothing better. I’ve used things that have been open source and then abandoned and being open source doesn’t mean any software can be easily picked up by others and even if it can, many times the quality and responsiveness seem to suffer.
Having said that I would like to suggest to the devs that they make a commitment to the community: if the decide to stop developing/supporting this product that they will open source the code. I think that that commitment would make a lot of users who have expressed concerns here feel a lot more comfortable.
I had previously been using Joplin, Qownnotes and trillium. Joplin was very late to add plugins and they still are far behind this community. Qownnotes has a small but useful set of plugins and the developer is very active. trillium was built to be hacked and both the front end and backend are scriptable. Looked at logseq early but wasn’t ready.
I am happy with Obsidian and especially want to thank the community for the amazing plugins and themes.
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+1 for open source.
I’m new btw, just installed obsidian a few days ago.
I’m currently trialing this program for my college study notes. Previously I used Joplin for this task; it’s pretty good, but is more aimed at simple note taking–and my notes have expanded to a point where I need to link knowledge together.
It is unfortunate that this software isn’t open source. I really appreciate how obsidian stores its notes–Joplin stores the files as hashed filenames making it prohibitively difficult to browse notes through the filesystem. This eases lock-in concerns, but doesn’t fully resolve the issue of the software itself not being open.
I did skim through some discussion on this topic, including some developer responses. It seems to me that the developers have a misunderstanding of open source in general (or at least, their views differ from my views on open source).
If the developers don’t wish to maintain documentation, or manage code contributions, that’s fine. It’s their code after all, and I do believe there are means to license their software in a way that prohibits distributing forks. (Even though that goes against FSF/GNU philosophies).
The reason I believe most here are asking for open source, is for the ability to examine the code, and/or personally compile the software for themselves. This is desirable because it validates that the software one runs doesn’t have hidden backdoors/what-have-you within the binary blob. There are other software offerings which do a similar thing to what I’m describing; Vivaldi (chromium-based proprietary Web Browser) does release the source code for viewing, but prohibits modification.
I’m aware of certain other alternatives that I may also check out, such as logseq. If anyone responses to my post here feel free to mention any and all alternatives, there may be ones I’ve yet to find. Also, do correct me if I’m wrong on any points. Thank you.
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It sounds like what everyone is asking for is a security audit, or the ability to perform one. Which is much different, and probably more feasible, than releasing the source code for all the Obsidian projects. If people are asking to open source Obsidian it’s not clear what the ask is. Does that mean taking pull requests and integrating other people’s code? That would go against the goal of ensuring security. Would the source code be released with every release? Do you want to be able to build the code too? If the build system isn’t documented I’m not sure open sourcing the code will help engender much trust.
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Just posting once to let everyone know that I am thankful for obsidian making headlines, without it I wouldn’t know tools like these existed.
As a closed sourced app though, its completely useless. I came for future proofing knowledge and so I am moving to logseq because its a real open source project.
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+1 for open source.
This is an absolute necessity for Obsidian to persist into the future. That’s my point of view. If it’s not open source, it won’t last much longer because there will be other alternatives that will be open source and we’ll be moving to them. It’s that easy.
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Just FYI, Zettlr is open-source, is very similar to Obsidian (but without plug-ins), and has a friendly lead developer looking for dev and documentation help. It has a Discord server here: Zettlr
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I so wish I could spend a couple of days fixing the iCloud implementation or implementing Google Drive. The current iPhone sync with iCloud is just terrible… however, I just can’t contribute to this, which would benefit everyone…
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+ 1 for closed source
obsidian is working great for me and i see no reason to “fix” something that isn’t broke.
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The plugin API can be used (and has been used) to support third party sync solutions. Go ahead, nobody is stopping you.
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I agree with suburbanyute. I am not knowledgeable enough to appreciate the difference, so I’m sure there are aspects of the question I’m failing to appreicate, but I’m squarely in the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” camp.
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