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Obsidian has been around for years at this point. It's completely free to use without limitations on functionality. They make money by charging for sync, but ar

Obsidian has been around for years at this point. It's completely free to use without limitations on functionality. They make money by charging for sync, but are happy to point out that there are free options to sync data. So where are these anti-user features? Why does the business model lead to them? "Not open source" doesn't count.

dunham 4y ago
I have no idea what features are "anti-user", but I would note that it is not free for commercial use. I'm paying for Obsidian sync and still can't use Obsidian for work. (At the moment, I'm using logseq there.) https://obsidian.md/eula https://obsidian.md/eula
- mpalmer 4y ago
  I'm not sure I'd agree that pricing is ipso facto anti-user, but I grant that it's a limitation that can be out of the end user's direct control.
stonepresto 4y ago
An example of an anti-user feature I think Obsidian might fall into is making the end-user the product for the free tier. That's just how those business models work, they are inherently anti-user because the user is the product. FOSS allows you to choose to be free tier or pay for their services. The difference is in the free tier: you can do the leg work and hack together your own systems to match their paid services (namely public hosting). Its sort of a promise that you can use, audit, help improve, and love the free product without having to be concerned about forfeiting your privacy or security. Additionally, FOSS projects always benefit from community auditing of the code, increasing the reliability and security of the software instead of relying on a few individuals to catch bugs. Anyways all this to say "not FOSS" might not count itself, but implies there are other anti-user features at play.
- mpalmer 4y ago
  I'd definitely be worried about that if they had investors, but as far as I know, it's entirely self-owned, and they are happy if they make enough money to support their small staff of (currently) six. Not even sure all of them take a salary , for that matter. Outside investors seem to me to be the real anti-user signal. Everything else flows from that.

dunham 4y ago

I have no idea what features are "anti-user", but I would note that it is not free for commercial use. I'm paying for Obsidian sync and still can't use Obsidian for work. (At the moment, I'm using logseq there.) https://obsidian.md/eula https://obsidian.md/eula

mpalmer 4y ago
I'm not sure I'd agree that pricing is ipso facto anti-user, but I grant that it's a limitation that can be out of the end user's direct control.

stonepresto 4y ago

An example of an anti-user feature I think Obsidian might fall into is making the end-user the product for the free tier. That's just how those business models work, they are inherently anti-user because the user is the product. FOSS allows you to choose to be free tier or pay for their services. The difference is in the free tier: you can do the leg work and hack together your own systems to match their paid services (namely public hosting). Its sort of a promise that you can use, audit, help improve, and love the free product without having to be concerned about forfeiting your privacy or security. Additionally, FOSS projects always benefit from community auditing of the code, increasing the reliability and security of the software instead of relying on a few individuals to catch bugs. Anyways all this to say "not FOSS" might not count itself, but implies there are other anti-user features at play.

mpalmer 4y ago
I'd definitely be worried about that if they had investors, but as far as I know, it's entirely self-owned, and they are happy if they make enough money to support their small staff of (currently) six. Not even sure all of them take a salary , for that matter. Outside investors seem to me to be the real anti-user signal. Everything else flows from that.