4 ms·

Agree, data lock-in is probably the biggest concern I have with any new productivity or note-taking tool. It's tough because innovations in tools generally req

by npunt 8y ago

Agree, data lock-in is probably the biggest concern I have with any new productivity or note-taking tool. It's tough because innovations in tools generally require some degree of schema or file format customization. I don't know about other tools but at least with Airtable I know I can always hit the API to get my data, though I will miss out on certain business logic around it like data validation, and probably a lot of other details. The best proxy I have to allay some of my data portability concerns is how much funding the companies have. Funding is a double-edged sword but comparing two companies, one funded at $50m and the other at $5m, it's hard not to go with the former. I am heartened though to see that some of my favorite tools (Airtable and Coda) have gotten very large investments, which tell me they'll be around for a while. When I see similar products not getting those investments, it's a strong signal to stay away or only use them as a toy.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
New tools need to signal their trustworthiness by exporting to legacy formats. Even if it means losing something in the process. Give me CSV, DOCX, or an SQLite DB. Not exactly rocket science.
- vxNsr 8y ago
  Or better yet, give me a native app that I can download to my machine and use forever no matter what happens to your startup. The reason word is gonna continue to exist long after all these fly-by-night productivity startups have gone under or been bought up and wound down is because it doesn't rely on the cloud to work, though ms seems to be trying to head in that direction unfortunately.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
> It's tough because innovations in tools generally require some degree of schema or file format customization. It's not tough. All it needs is to allow me to download the data in whatever format you actually use to store it, or some serialization of it. Myself, or other interested parties, can reverse-engineer it if they're too lazy (or too much into abusive business models) to provide documentation of the format. It's simple as that. The lock-in isn't in the format, it's in the inability to get the full document (and possibly reimport it later) in any format at all.

by npunt 8y ago

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

New tools need to signal their trustworthiness by exporting to legacy formats. Even if it means losing something in the process. Give me CSV, DOCX, or an SQLite DB. Not exactly rocket science.

vxNsr 8y ago
Or better yet, give me a native app that I can download to my machine and use forever no matter what happens to your startup. The reason word is gonna continue to exist long after all these fly-by-night productivity startups have gone under or been bought up and wound down is because it doesn't rely on the cloud to work, though ms seems to be trying to head in that direction unfortunately.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

> It's tough because innovations in tools generally require some degree of schema or file format customization. It's not tough. All it needs is to allow me to download the data in whatever format you actually use to store it, or some serialization of it. Myself, or other interested parties, can reverse-engineer it if they're too lazy (or too much into abusive business models) to provide documentation of the format. It's simple as that. The lock-in isn't in the format, it's in the inability to get the full document (and possibly reimport it later) in any format at all.