19 ms·

Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

414 points by TTTZ 3y ago

vikmals 3y ago
That website looks horrible.
ph1lw 3y ago
I had been using Anytype for some time but a big disadvantage is it requires a standalone app = Not possible on a corporate laptop. What I use is VSCode with Foam - a colleague uses Dendron. Has the advantage that I can also use GitHub Copilot or local LLMs for autocompletion. Imho the combo is better for pure writing and building quick connections between documents
MadaboutDana 3y ago
Interesting to read about AnyType's supposedly poor import of MD files – I imported a folder of MD files (from one of my large Obsidian repositories) with no problems whatsoever, at (very) impressive speed. So not quite sure what's going on there. In short: works for me ;-)
mgrandl 3y ago
Just downloaded it. This looks incredibly polished and smooth! Will play around with it a bit, although I have never been good at taking notes.
- Eric_WVGG 3y ago
  iOS version is very well-crafted, but the type on iPad Mini is much, much too small. (I say that as a person who generally prefers small type.)
digdugdirk 3y ago
I see this software has tables - are these able to be used like excel sheets? I see this as a necessity for software like this. It's the one feature that Notion has that the competition doesn't seem to have, and it's absolutely crucial to everyday work for so many people. It seems to be a blind spot for programmer-types, I'm guessing because they see Excel as limited?
- TTTZ 3y ago
  I don't think Notion has formulas for tables. I think you mean formulas for databases. The formulas for databases like Notion has is actually the second-most requested feature right now and is tagged as Acknowledged, so hopefully we will get it soon.
- niam 3y ago
  Coda has the most powerful tables I've seen of the Notion alternatives, and was a fair bit cheaper for my team since they don't charge per viewer or editor but per "creator". But unfortunately it's not open-source or local. They have a pretty good [writeup](https://coda.io/blog/productivity/tables-not-spreadsheets https://coda.io/blog/productivity/tables-not-spreadsheets) on why "spreadsheets" were avoided in favor of more traditional "tables" (a la RDBMS).
- squirtlebonflow 3y ago
  [dead]
- sharipova 3y ago
  (co-founder anytype here) tables are simple now, no formulas. Plan to add formulas to data-bases (what I think you mean by notion having it) - it's one of the top requested features on our forum
ChrisClark 3y ago
I've been using this for about a year. It's very polished and been stable for me. The Apple and Android apps work well too. They've been planning to open source it from the beginning, I'm glad it's finally here. I'm using it as a very basic note system, nothing fancy like others are doing though.
jitl 3y ago
(I work at Notion) The Anytype model is really cool - in a way, they’ve rebuilt Lotus Notes with 21st century E2E encrypted protocols and technology. They’ve built a really solid personal knowledge app with many of Notion’s features - and some clear improvements over Notion. However they also demonstrate the complexity and tradeoffs of the E2E approach. Anytype has been a work-in-progress since at least 2019. Their docs still state: > Future versions will allow you to share your work and safely collaborate with others > There's no browser version of the app. Anytype is a stand-alone software, that works on desktop or mobile devices. There are many points of vulnerability in-browser apps that would compromise our commitment to data security and encryption. Without these features Anytype is in a much smaller market (PKM) with less distribution than Notion/Coda/Dropbox Paper/Quip/Confluence/…
- kwanbix 3y ago
  It is so interesting that you are mentioning Lotus Notes because that is exactly what I was thinking when I was setting up our Confluence pages: it is exactly like Lotus Notes' Knowledge Base template, with some additional funtionality. Crazy how we keep reinventing things. By the way, and this is just my point of view: we moved from Notion to Confluence because Notion has no free tier for small teams (4 people). We were working on a project for a not-for profit org and their money is always tight. Since you already give Notion free, have you ever evaluating doing like Atlassian that up to 10 (or 5) people the thing is free?
- lewisjoe 3y ago
  Google Docs have somehow solved E2E encryption with safe sharing and collaboration. They haven't advertised it much, just a mention here and there as an enterprise requirement or something, it's good how they've implemented it on top of an existing web-first collaboration product. They do have technical challenges implementing add-on services on top of content - For example, the grammar checker or any content assistance is disabled in E2E encrypted docs, which makes sense. Surprisingly they support spellcheck: I guess they are shipping dictionaries to browsers and use a local lookup. (Google Docs doesn't rely on browser's dictionary because their editor is not based on `contenteditable`)
taminka 3y ago
i've been following anytype since 2019, when the initial public release plan was for autumn of 2020 (lol), and since then it has transitioned from being a libp2p based google docs alternative into something more complicated, with relationships, sets, etc, and tbh i just never use it, because it's become too complicated every time i open the app, which uses electron btw ;(, i catch myself looking at the explainer videos sent out, explaining all the concepts, it's a tool that (for me personally) gets in the way of actually doing anything a lot; maybe there are people for whom this is an optimal setup, but if you're looking for a privacy-friendly google doc alternative, this is not it imo
- qbasic_forever 3y ago
  It really is amazing how little competition Google docs has with free or open tools. I just want something that lets me write a never ending river of rich text documents. I don't want to write markdown source (by default), I don't want a "preview" as I type, etc.--I want WYSIWYG. I don't want to micromanage folders and hierarchies and classifications and tags and whatnot, I don't even want to think about storage or files. Just an app that instantly starts, lets me capture rich text, and search through documents. I've never found anything close to that outside Google docs and it's frustrating.
  - taminka 3y ago
    real a libp2p based wysiwyg or even a plaintext app with p2p sync + works offline + encrypted + cross device sync + collaboration with other users would be invaluable
  - ukuina 3y ago
    Google Docs being free probably has a lot to do with the lack of competition.
  - catapart 3y ago
    Would you need to manage page settings, like margins and tab stops, or are those things more than you need? If it really is just a local-first, rich text editor with syncing, searchable documents that you need, there might be something on the horizon. But if you need a full blown document editor, that's a bit of a different story. Anything more than formatted text and inline images changes the scope in pretty exponential ways.
derbOac 3y ago
Can someone explain this is — what it does and what it's used for? I'm not familiar with Notion at all and the page — which basically says you can use it for everything — is not helpful in this regard. It sounds like a P2P shared note and document app but it's not clear to me.
- pshirshov 3y ago
  It is a P2P note taking app with some object-oriented modeling capabilities.
- squirtlebonflow 3y ago
  It's much more complicated than that and that's it's biggest downside. I've been trying to learn how to use it but it's quite confusing figuring out their terminology and UI. One thing that I did with it was make a Recipe type that has any number of Ingredient types in it, takes any number or arbitrary Dietary Restriction tags (e.g. Gluten, Dairy, Vegan), and takes parameters like cooking time and number of servings etc. So not only is a Recipe a note that explains how to make it, but it has a template with the boilerplate information pre-filled so when writing down a new Recipe, it's faster, and it has all that metadata, which allows you to construct Sets from the Recipes. For example, I can have a document called Quick Vegan Crowd-Pleasers that is a Set of all vegan Recipes with cooking time under 30 minutes and 8+ servings. If I really wanted to go psycho mode with it, I could track every ingredient currently in my kitchen and filter recipes by what I can make with what I have on hand. You can really do a lot with it. It's just time intensive to set up and also to keep up with entering data.
- rchaud 3y ago
  Think of it as a CMS with custom fields and widgets, for a personal website or knowledgebase.
- catapart 3y ago
  "Knowledgebase apps" try to reconcile the fact that people (most people? all people?) think in sporadic and unstructured ways with the fact that maintaining data is mostly about codifying it into a structure. So, instead of forcing a person to think "which app do I need to start getting some ideas sketched out", the app wants people to use it and then do whatever makes sense to them as a means of dumping all of the disparate knowledge into a bag so that it can be recalled, even if unstructured, later. In an idealized example: if a writer got an idea, they would whip open the knowledgebase app and then... - they might begin writing a list of characters and start detailing their relationships. - they might upload a few photos of their local environment for remembering setting details, later. - they might open a 'canvas' and put together a rough drawing of a new spaceship design they're mulling over. - they might start working out the economy of their world by drafting an accounting table and assigning the trade networks. The idea being that if any one of those tasks leads to any of the others (an inevitability), it's nice to just be able to scroll down the page and start on the new data without having to think "okay, which app do should I put this in"? So, overall, it's about velocity of data recording. Some people just don't work that fast, or would prefer to consider HOW to think about an idea before they want to consider the idea, itself. So, for them, this may seem a bit like overkill. But there are definitely people whom can be far more productive if they can bounce around storing data as it surfaces in their mind, rather than when they have time to categorize it.
ocrow 3y ago
I'm not familiar with Notion. How does this compare to something like Obsidian?
- arapacana 3y ago
  Their philosophies are quite different; Obsidian is much more text and link oriented (it's basically a front-end for markdown), whereas Notion is object-oriented and gives primacy to the kinds of objects that can contain text (blocks, tables, quotes, etc.) Obsidian can be made to work like Notion and vice-versa, but I see Obsidian as more of a hypertext environment/wiki creator, and Notion as an integrated environment to interface with different ways of interacting with knowledge-focused objects. I prefer Obsidian largely due to its simplicity, and the fact that it maps really well to how I think. Notion is also incredible for what it does, but it's too much for my brain, and the app is still a bit too slow for the speed with which my thoughts can escape me. Anytype purports to be like Notion.
- PurpleRamen 3y ago
  Obsidian is plaintext, Notion is richtext. This means, it's simpler to write complex documents in Notion and you don't need to know and handle complicated syntax. Which is good complex stuff like layout, tables, images. Anytype seems to have the same richtext-interface. But with obsidian on the other side, editing can be faster, if you know your syntax, and can type well. And unlike obsidian, Notion has no direct mechanism for extension, which means there is no way to modify the app, or extend Notion-Documents with new types of data. There is an indirect way, by embedding urls, which comes with some limitations, and ultimatly it means you are depending on other servers, which comes with some more problems. Not sure how anytype supports extensions.
  - sharipova 3y ago
    Anytype aims to be an open ecosystem. We open the source code. Now will announce the contributor program. We will start with translations and gallery of templates, then imports/data adaptors, then design themes and extensions.
pshirshov 3y ago
In contrast with many others crappy things (Notion, Standard Notes, Joplin, Notesnook, Obsidian, etc, etc, etc, I tried literally dozens of notetaking apps, including some self-hosted stuff), Anytype is, at least, barely acceptable. It can be used to write notes and share them between devices, it can be used in offline mode, it is cross-platform, it has acceptable navigation and more or less good editor with proper code highlighting. Also, you don't have to share your content with server owners. The UX isn't that nice at this point (especially the graph view which is totally useless if you have at least hundreds of objects) but, again, that's something acceptable and it's free (at least for now).
nashashmi 3y ago
One thing I found amazing about Notion was how nicely my Evernote was imported in. Can I do the same here
- sharipova 3y ago
  not yet, we have very limited import options at the moment (notion, markdown, csv and protobuf). This surely limits our activation > not easy to start. We are working on more import options and also plan to publish an API and hope our community helps to build more options together with us
ch_sm 3y ago
I haven‘t tried it yet, but damnit, you guys really touched a nerve with the aesthetics of the landing page and the references to personal computer pioneers. It gives me OpenDoc vibes. I‘m so easily manipulated.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mickelsen 3y ago
  It was motivating a few years ago, when I started to see all these references to Engelbart and better thinking and whatnot, but after testing a bunch of projects that amount to nothing, get abandoned or in a state of eternal coming-soon walled garden building, where even some of them already closed (Roam Research, Athens) it got tiring. And I still don't have that promised knowledge-tool-of-the-future in my hands, just some hype with note graphs, prolix bloggers and their 'creative mentation', yet none of the implementations (not the concepts themselves) have proven to be any sort of breakthrough, or usable enough, where commercial last-generation notetaking and journaling tools managed better at a certain point. It's time to get real, folks! If they can't deliver on their promises, they don't deserve our attention. I'll stick with what actually works, even if it's not as flashy. Rant over.
PurpleRamen 3y ago
Why does this smell like a cult? Talking about trust and having illusive pictures and designs.. And why do I need to login for an offline app? Where does the data really go? There is some setting remote storage, and some mb already used, so is in reallity an online-app with some offline-mirroring? But it seems there is not a choice to set the local storage-path, and the saved files are just your usual electron-blob-files. Seems there is no way to really access or control my files externally. This doesn't give much impression to be trustable.
- jordiburgos 3y ago
  I think the same. I was trying to find the "How to install the server" but here is no option. It just saves the data in their servers. There is too many wording about security and control, but only in their control.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - pronkin 3y ago
    Here is the link with the instructions https://tech.anytype.io/how-to/self-hosting https://tech.anytype.io/how-to/self-hosting
    - taink 3y ago
      That's useless if the client also sends the same data to Any's node. You can't disable that for now: Self-hosting only without a backup node is currently unavailable The self-hosting-only feature is not released yet. If you don’t want to use Anytype node and instead use p2p sync between your devices, you can block Anytype network traffic (Anytype & Anytype Helper) via your firewall. From https://doc.anytype.io/d/data-and-security/data-storage-and-deletion https://doc.anytype.io/d/data-and-security/data-storage-and-...
      - pronkin 3y ago
        The idea that you can compile apps with your network configuration, so it's not easy, but it works.
catapart 3y ago
This is awesome! Love to see more local-first, security-focused apps! Especially ones that are free. Asking because I'm currently working on a local-first app that I am gaming out how to sync to non-local networks: The docs state that the app syncs to local P2P networks. Does that mean it doesn't sync across the internet? If so, is that because of the cost of maintaining/renting a TURN server? Or is there a technical limitation? If it does sync across the open internet, are there restrictions to that? Sorry for the grilling! It's just an area of interest at the right time. In trying to come up with a WebRTC solution, I think I've settled on defeat. The local network syncing works like a charm, but I haven't had any luck in trying to get around a TURN server by using an API endpoint to provide routing data. It would be nice if there were other prebuilts than COTURN (something deployable to a deno/node server would be ideal), but with what we currently have, I think I've settled on just pushing the encrypted data through my api server, letting users encrypt and decrypt with well-known hashing, based on some key they provide in each client (exporting client and importing client; they never exchange keys). Anyway, my pet projects aside, this thing looks really full-featured! Great work here. I use Notion, daily, and this could easily replace it for me. In fairness, I don't take full advantage of Notion, but I doubt most people do either. Seems like you've covered enough of the bases to provide a real product for all but some edge cases, so that's pretty awesome! I'll echo others in lamenting a web app; that's what will keep me from switching from Notion, because its just not portable enough for the work I do. But, otherwise, I'm happy with it so far. Gonna try to plan some stuff in it and see if there are any creaky wheels!
- 16bitvoid 3y ago
  > Does that mean it doesn't sync across the internet? They currently host their own backup node, so it does sync across the internet, but you only get 1GB of storage (or 10GB if you were in the alpha) on their backup node. Once that's exceeded, additional files are only synced P2P. They're planning on providing extra storage for a cost and soon anyone will be able to self-host their own backup node.
  - catapart 3y ago
    Right; should have been more specific, thanks! I meant to ask if the app syncs P2P over the internet, rather than just through their provided storage. My solution is to have short-lived data so that they can't reach more than a few MBs of memory on my server, but if there's a straightforward way to do P2P across the globe, I'd very much prefer that option. Asking people to believe that I can't look at their (encrypted) data is fine, but preventing me from having their data at all is ideal. Given what you pointed out, I definitely figure they're not doing WWW P2P syncing, but you'd be surprised the technical stuff you can figure out by just asking someone who spent way too long building it. They're usually happy to tell you all kinds of interesting details (especially when it comes to 'interesting' bugs/workarounds/hacks)!
c7DJTLrn 3y ago
>Computer pioneers Nice to see Ted Nelson getting some recognition.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pgeorgi 3y ago
Note, their idea[0] of "open source" doesn't match the popular Open Source Definition [1] [0] https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-kotlin/blob/main/LICENSE.md https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-kotlin/blob/main/LICENSE... [1] https://opensource.org/osd/ https://opensource.org/osd/
- kykeonaut 3y ago
  Hence why the "free" in "Free and Open Source Software" really matters. :)
  - sydon 3y ago
    Damn, didn't even think about that.
  - npteljes 3y ago
    Not really, someone could just use that misleadingly too, just as with "open source". "Open Source" already doesn't cover these special licenses, instead, the "source available" is used. Any also acknowledges this actually - the license they are using is called the "Any Source Available License 1.0".
    - kykeonaut 3y ago
      After a bit of brushing up on my acronyms, one could indeed use FOSS or FLOSS to denote that a piece of software is either free (or libre) or just open source [0]. The term "open source" is not referring to software with a free license, but to software whose source code is available to the public irrespective of license [1]. [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
      - pgeorgi 3y ago
        That article you post as [1] refers to https://opensource.org/osd/ https://opensource.org/osd/ for "The official definition of open source software (which is published by the Open Source Initiative and is too long to include here)" The FSF article directly follow with this, which contradicts your claim: "However, the obvious meaning for the expression “open source software” is “You can look at the source code.” Indeed, most people seem to misunderstand “open source software” that way. (The clear term for that meaning is “source available.”) That criterion is much weaker than the free software definition, much weaker also than the official definition of open source. It includes many programs that are neither free nor open source." And the OSD also disagrees: "The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software." Terms that can be summarized as "whose source code is available to the public" are called "source available", even by the FSF.
menacingly 3y ago
This is really nice, but I think the perennial curse of technology people is producing "<app>, but with <esoteric principle>" People want a thing, not an ideal, and they'll sell their soul to get the thing. At this point, it's actually being surprised by this that is the ludicrous position. Philosophies are a differentiator for a very small portion of population. If you want them to buy into ideals, you've taken on two problems: Make a thing they want with its own differentiators outside of the noble pursuit, _and_ trojan in your principles.
- cj 3y ago
  Normally I would agree with this. But with Notion in particular, and how heavily they're pushing Notion AI, I could see some c-level exec types being uncomfortable with the idea of Notion (or any managed/hosted service) to store trade secrets, company IP, etc. When a company is pushing AI features as heavily as Notion is, it raises questions how Notion is planning to (or already using) your private data for fine tuning, model training, potentially scooping up your company's IP in the process.
  - sharipova 3y ago
    Those who don’t think it matters already have a choice of great products. We try to build a better alternative to those who think it does. We also think it’s our job to make the ux great, to make sn analogy we think a healthy and tasty food is a better value proposition which for a network is very important.
- Qwertious 3y ago
  This is true, and I sometimes wonder if the only true solution is regulation or overhauling IP or such. But I don't see that happening, because proprietary software is too large and frankly libre software isn't asshole-proof enough for capitalism.
  - menacingly 3y ago
    My preference would be using this tendency the other way. Make it so good they can't resist it, even if they accidentally eat their vegetables along the way.
iFire 3y ago
I don't understand this license. It's not open-source. https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-ts/blob/main/LICENSE.md https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-ts/blob/main/LICENSE.md
- pronkin 3y ago
  Co-founder of anytype is here. The most of are repos are open-source. We have our philosophy regarding open source here https://blog.anytype.io/our-open-philosophy/ https://blog.anytype.io/our-open-philosophy/ Happy to discuss concerns regarding our approach.
  - icy 3y ago
    Yeah no, that's not how open-source works. Your license is effectively a "source available" license and not officially approved by the OSI: https://opensource.org/licenses/ https://opensource.org/licenses/
  - iFire 3y ago
    I don't see your license on this list -- https://opensource.org/licenses/ https://opensource.org/licenses/ Please don't advertise anytype as open-source.
  - cjbprime 3y ago
    This is not an open source license: https://opensource.org/osd/ https://opensource.org/osd/ 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
  - pierrefermat1 3y ago
    He literally voiced a concern and you just completed ignored it by linking a BS corporate speak page. You are available on Github which doesn't = open-source Also why only most and not all?
- koushikg 3y ago
emptysongglass 3y ago
I'm sorry to hijack the thread but as someone forced to use Notion as a team wiki, please improve the performance! I can't emphasize this enough. The Notion subreddit is filled with complaints: if that's not a wake up call to every single PM at Notion, I don't know what is. Stop shipping features until the perf is a joy to your users. It's mind-boggling to me that companies would prio anything over fixing perf outside of fixing bugs. Notion is the single biggest frustration of any workplace tool I've ever used in my entire software career and it all comes down to its performance.
- dilap 3y ago
  yeah i hate the slow perf too, but their success in the market unfortunately i think validates the "features over perf" strategy (also, as slow as it is now, it's MUCH faster than it used to be, if you can imagine that!)
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > Notion is the single biggest frustration of any workplace tool I've ever used in my entire software career and it all comes down to its performance. Even worse than JIRA, or MS Teams? That sounds horrible indeed.
  - ponyous 3y ago
    Not in my experience. Notion is faster than Jira. But we don't have super massive wikis, hundreds of pages at most.
  - emptysongglass 3y ago
    Yes, worse but it depends on what type of page you're working in. If it's of medium complexity and up, it's worse (a few media elements, maybe a database, etc.) If it's just text, it's faster than JIRA or Teams.
    - nXqd 3y ago
      I have the same problem, I understand the enjoyment of sales / marketing team when it comes to using Notion, but for engineering team, it's just horrible, so slow.
replwoacause 3y ago
I’ve been on the waitlist to try this for close to 5 years and never once received an email. Now, it is available for everyone to try…so I just installed it. Looks nice enough, but it is too similar to Notion for my taste and since I don’t like using Notion I don’t think I would like using this. I’ll stick with Obsidian because I value the flexibility it gives me (running my own code, customizing everything, etc.)
- sharipova 3y ago
  This is how the email system works. We invited everyone from our waitlist ahead of the beta. But we can’t control email deliverability. We know that several % of our letters never reach recipients, but have no influence how to change that. Very annoying. And sorry you didn’t get your invitation
  - replwoacause 3y ago
    Yeah... no it isn't. Blaming people's email servers is the wrong move here. I've used Fastmail.com for the last 5 years, I keep my inbox at 0 and I look at my spam folder every week. I've never had an issue receiving email before. And by the way, over those years I signed up for the beta multiple times. All kinds of wild shit makes it through to my email, so there's no way your invite got bounced. Good luck.
rodrigodlu 3y ago
Painful to import things from Logseq or Obsidian. It imports one md at a time, and the 'zip' thing does not click me. It seem to focus too much on individual collections and pages and investing time upfront thinking about how to organize and navigate. Awesome replacement for some things I had in OneNote, thou. Like an easy personal wiki. But logseq (and as a second choice obsidian) is taking my heart because the activation energy cost is really low to just start writing notes, the flow seems more natural. It's really an alternative to notion and maybe onenote, but not to whom just want to write more freely and easily finding things later then reorganizing what it's still important with some plugins and keyboard shortcuts (auto/semiauto moving blocks from one md to another). For instance, daily notes: I don't want to put a title. Just give me the current date, and ability to see previous days in a few keystrokes, some tags for the blocks I'm taking note, that will help me find the related blocks and pages later. The P2P sync is what made me try the first place. It's working fine, nice! I did a similar thing with logseq + syncthing, and all my notes are plain files. I can't find the format anytype is using. The local working folder just looks like a standard chrome/electron folder with everything inside. Unusable for my own backup purposes. Nice to know about in general, ty!
- sharipova 3y ago
  (co-founder of anytype) thank you for this feedback! Totally agree, that import sucks - very few options. We plan to improve the import and also publish an API to engage our community of contributors to help us build and improve more of them. on titles of daily notes - again, well spotted - again, we have plans to improve :) happy you liked p2p sync - this was the main objective and the next big thing here is multi-player based on p2p
- kirso 3y ago
  Logseq's journal is the biggest productivity hack we got that we never thought we needed. Don't know where to put the idea, note or just a scribble? You have a 2022-05-12 page without the cognitive load or confusion.
  - matthiaswh 3y ago
    Let's be cautious where we attribute credit. Daily journaling has been a thing for, oh, centuries. At the very least Zim has had the same journal feature dating back over a decade. I'm sure others can't point to similar software stretching back at least another decade before that.
jrm4 3y ago
Everything about this smells like "we're going to say we're open-source and that you're always fully in control" and then you read the fine print and find out there's some way to rugpull or some other barrier that will screw the user. At this stage, having seen so many of these things, I'm comfortable disbelieving them outright WITHOUT reading further.
- number6 3y ago
  My feeling to: feels like a free sample and then they will lock you in
  - sharipova 3y ago
    (co-founder of anytype) the whole purpose of anytype is user autonomy from software provider. The data standard is open. The code is open. You can self-host your network of backup nodes (tech skills required as this is self-hosting alpha released this week). The app is local first with p2p sync (you remove the back up node, you still have your data and still have sync in local networks). Most importantly you control the keys - encryption keys, access to your account - this is not touched by anytype - noone can block you out of your account, no central registry of users, all these. There are two principles for our business model: self-sustinability - support a community of contributors to improve the product and build this positive fly wheel and universal accessibility - anyone can use anytype for free if they use their resources. I hope all of this decisions deserve attention and reveal our intention (they are not accidental things)
    - jrm4 3y ago
      If you care to answer then -- what is the thing that you provide that I must pay for? As in, if I don't give you money, then I don't get ....
      - sharipova 3y ago
        You can use anytype for free if you use your own resources (storage, backup). There is an option to selfhost, or just use locally with local sync. You can also become a member of our association and it’s membership based, it will give you backup (if you don’t want to handle it yourself) and some things on top for those who want their spaces to be discoverable in our network. If you use privately for your team/org you may not be interested in paying. That’s ok with us :) joining the association and paying is voluntary. We have a principal of universal accessibility
mingalieva 3y ago
Very nice and well developed product. I've been using it for a while! Glad that it's public and has a mobile app now! I've been a heavy user of Notion, finally, there is a better and more secured alternative!
chambers 3y ago
The proportion of philosophy to features in their marketing seems off. They say "trust our code, not our words" and then spend several paragraphs of words talking up their ideals. It feels like something is being hidden or talked around. Data-independence may be one aspect that's not transparent. Compared to https://obsidian.md/ https://obsidian.md/, I can't just use raw Markdown or CSV file with Anytype. I've paid Obsidian $300+ just because it's data independence with a few obvious strings attached. By the same token, if I pursued a local-version of Notion for my team, I would also want the same freedom that local, open-standard files offer.
- pronkin 3y ago
  Anytype's functionality cannot operate using Markdown or CSV, as these formats are limited for our specific use-cases. Instead, we've defined our data format in a protobuf file, which is open and MIT-licensed. You can always compile a version yourself and use your data without relying on Anytype. We hope to include data adaptors in future developments
- fabifabulous 3y ago
  Markdown sucks in some ways though. Not being able to merge cells in tables? Come on.
- junipertea 3y ago
  To be fair, you can compile the code (including the protobuf format) and implement your own export to any format. It's a bit obtuse, but I had a obsidian vault full of markdown files that are also completely useless as they have a bunch metadata that needs the obsidian plugin to render. This is not a critique of obsidian, but there is a limit of markdown and obsidian is bypassing it using a lot of extra code. If obsidian got deleted from the internet, I would have my markdown files but a lot of the processing would be gone. If we were to store markdowns only with linking and no advanced tables, do we need any advanced app on top?
- koushikg 3y ago
  Obsidian as I recall, is closed source, and they give some weird non reasons for that, so it’s not radical to assume they’re doing something ‘not in the open’, so not a good contender when talking about owning your data and data independence! Moreover, the statements just meant you don’t have to take our ‘words’ for it, here’s the proof. And in a different context, developers explained their motivations and what they’re inspired by, to work on this kind of software. There’s absolutely no over the top ‘marketing’ to any type as well, as they explained in different post, they don’t want to market, buy built in customer base with VC money and so on.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
Marketed with "Trust our code" , but doesn't share it?
- TTTZ 3y ago
  Here is their github with repos https://github.com/anyproto https://github.com/anyproto
  - say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
    Those are client libraries, not server
    - pronkin 3y ago
      Here we are https://github.com/anyproto/any-sync https://github.com/anyproto/any-sync
moneywoes 3y ago
How do you make money
sharipova 3y ago
hey everyone, Zhanna - co-founder of anytype here (with my co-founder Anton also here). If you have questions or feedback, we are here to answer and listen :)
idmontie 3y ago
"There's no browser version of the app. Anytype is a stand-alone software, that works on desktop or mobile devices. There are many points of vulnerability in-browser apps that would compromise our commitment to data security and encryption." What does this even mean? How does having a mobile app mean more security than a web app? Are they worried about browser extensions? Or is this just an excuse not to host on the web?
hresvelgr 3y ago
I've been using this heavily, it's a good tool. Some of how it works is not intuitive coming from Notion but the docs are good enough that I got up to speed promptly. Anytype feels joyful to use in a similar way to Notion but without weight of Notion's mountain of features. It's got the right amount of focused functionality. There's some QoL issues present which annoy me, but they're nitpicks at best. Some things I would like to see would be alternate card previews for objects, and perhaps some options on organising/separating disconnected graphs, but I would be perfectly happy without, the functionality present is wonderfully spartan and I think I'd weep if it became a feature behemoth like Notion.
sdesol 3y ago
Here's some project health insights, for those interested. https://devboard.gitsense.com/anyproto https://devboard.gitsense.com/anyproto https://reviews.gitsense.com/insights/github?q=pull-age%3A%3C%3D120&t=crc-insights&tb=all&v=anyproto%2Fanytype-heart%20----%20anyproto%2Fanytype-kotlin%20----%20anyproto%2Fanytype-swift%20----%20anyproto%2Fanytype-swift-codegen%20----%20anyproto%2Fanytype-ts%3A%3Agithub%3Aanyproto%2Fanytype-heart%2Cgithub%3Aanyproto%2Fanytype-kotlin%2Cgithub%3Aanyproto%2Fanytype-swift%2Cgithub%3Aanyproto%2Fanytype-swift-codegen%2Cgithub%3Aanyproto%2Fanytype-ts%3A%3A%3A%3A%3A%3A1689866756032 https://reviews.gitsense.com/insights/github?q=pull-age%3A%3... Looks like Jira is used for issue tracking, so insights for issues and comments will be incomplete. There also appears to be a good mix of seasoned contributors (2+ years) and new (look for the gift icon in the review tool to see how long they have been contributing). Full Disclosure: This is my tool
- mdaniel 3y ago
  are you aware that the GH org parsing is apparently case sensitive? https://devboard.gitsense.com/jetbrains https://devboard.gitsense.com/jetbrains = blank https://devboard.gitsense.com/JetBrains https://devboard.gitsense.com/JetBrains = works (although it does whine about the number of repos)
  - sdesol 3y ago
    Yeah this is something I'll need to fix. Also, the repos limit is to keep resources in check. For example, crunching 5000 repos for Microsoft takes about 10 minutes and ties up 8 out of 20 query threads. Thanks for the feedback.
khobragade 3y ago
I tried this briefly about a year ago but didn't see myself using it. They had an hour long induction session over zoom to teach how to use the tool before they sent the download link iirc. It was too complicated. Moved on to Zotero and text/plain files for my notetaking and journaling needs ever since.
hosh 3y ago
I like the Notion and Confluence UIs. Are there tools for importing from Evernote? Does this have mobile apps? And I assume, if I want to back it up somewhere, I can set up a peer that would sync from my devices? A UI specific for journals is a huge selling point for me. That's like 80% of my use of Evernotes.
adr1an 3y ago
Here's another notion open source alternative: https://affine.pro/ https://affine.pro/
- hosh 3y ago
  Although a big selling point for Anytype is that it is local-first. My main gripe with Evernote now, is that in its effort to be a collaborative app, there is a lot of network latency for edits on my mobile device. By comparison, NotesNook is local-first and super fast.
  - adr1an 3y ago
    I forgot to mention, affine.pro is self-hostable too... and it doesn't require any account registration whatsoever on their website.
    - hosh 3y ago
      What I mean by “local-first” is not the same as “self-host”. Local-first software are architected in a way where the local device is the source of truth. It usually uses CDRTs or something like git to sync with other peers. It is not a client-server architecture. Uploading files to a personal server is more of designating the server as a peer and regularly syncing with it, similar to how git works with remote repos. Local-first architecture allows for better control over what you are storing. For me though, local-first architecture lets me take notes with little latency, and I don’t have to wait for timeouts so that the app realizes it is offline. I just want to get to typing in my note quickly and think about syncs later.
      - mickelsen 3y ago
        Yes, but Affine is local-first. You don't need a container infra or anything, just run locally without an account, data is stored in a user folder.
        hosh 3y ago
tonymet 3y ago
on one hand it’s good that we have so many note taking apps. it could also signal about a huge gap in the platform that’s not being addressed is it sync, ux , storage , collaboration the fact that we are pivoting note taking an productivity trends every couple years is interesting it could also just be another trend like micro services , nosql, orm , oop– something people do when they need to procrastinate getting work done
6uhrmittag 3y ago
Sorry but the landing page is super annoying. Everything gives the impression of being clickable and not even half of it is. Then I click on "crazy fast loading times" and a slow popups overlay appears.. the slider and the animations are feel deliberately annoying - slow slide.. when a slide is in the center it stops.. takes a deep breath and then is beeing reminded that it has to load it's three arms and bubbles... and all that for explaining in 2 sentence what open source is. (And the overlay not being dismissable with ESC is annoying)
- jklinger410 3y ago
  The UI for the website reminds me of the app itself. It paints its own canvas and is simplified to the point of adding more confusion.
- paddim8 3y ago
  The website is horribly over-engineered and makes it look like a crypto scam. Such a shame
hedgehog 3y ago
This looks pretty nice. I use Notion at work and mostly like it but not for personal data because I want everything available to back up on a physical disk. I've been burned too many times with data getting stuck in an inaccessible format when upstream apps get orphaned. Today my primary storage is files on disk in common formats (Markdown, PDFs, JPEGs, etc). Questions: Is there a way to get at the underlying documents stored in Anytype? Is there any path to a web accessible version for clients too small to host the full dataset? Use case is to host around 50GB of notes, records, and photos in one place.
- jevogel 3y ago
  Currently you can export all files, but there's no way to access them otherwise. They plan on having an API. Right now you're limited to 1GB of storage that they pin on their IPFS node, but they plan to enable self-hosting, i.e., using your own IPFS node. Roadmap on GitHub: https://github.com/orgs/anyproto/projects/1/views/1 https://github.com/orgs/anyproto/projects/1/views/1
Propelloni 3y ago
Don't bother to download if you are unwilling to create an account with their service.
- sharipova 3y ago
  Account creation happens on your device without an internet connection. Just the encryption key is generated. Anytype does not have a central registry of users. So i think you are misinterpreting it. We have no central registry where you create an account
_visgean 3y ago
Hmm I don't understand whats the benefit of having my notes on p2p network. Usually when it comes to notes I would prefer them to be private. Here I have some vague claim that the cryptographic key is safe enough. Well ok but what is the advantage here? Also the local first approach here just seems like a local storage on a disk. Not great. Essentially if I move notes from notion to here I am going from a service that has a clear API and understandable storage policies to a model where the data is some binary blob on a p2p network.. Idk this to me seems I would effectively have less control over my data.
- pronkin 3y ago
  By default, your account is created on the machine. You can use it without connecting to any network. We allow you to sync notes in a peer-to-peer way in local networks, or over the Anytype network (or your self-hosted network) via the internet. Currently, you can sync notes among your devices. Soon, you'll be able to collaborate with others using end-to-end encryption. I can't agree that the claim about the key is vague, as there is documentation and code on GitHub. You can check it, and we are happy to hear arguments. We are genuinely implementing a local-first approach. Why do you have doubts? We have a clear description of the data format, which is MIT licensed. Feel free to write and read. We hope that data adaptors will soon be available with the help of the community. You have full control over your data. Compile your version, and that's it.
mostlysimilar 3y ago
Very excited to see an alternative to Notion that checks so many of the boxes I care about, especially local-first control of my data. It would be nice if you would let me opt out of all of your telemetry. I know it's useful for development but I've had to block outbound requests to Sentry, Amplitude, and Graylog already. I would also like the ability to entirely disable cloud-anything, including backup.
- TTTZ 3y ago
  To allow analytics opt-out is on the roadmap for 2023Q3
  - pronkin 3y ago
    You can make a fork, disable analytics and make your own build. We plan to make smooth anlytics opt-out later this year.
beanjuiceII 3y ago
dang these types of website layouts are bad...how can i trust that your app is useful if can't even make a simple easy to read website telling me about your app?
- pronkin 3y ago
  It's a matter of taste, and ours differs. You can establish trust by going to GitHub, checking the code, and compiling it yourself. In my humble opinion, trust and taste aren't closely connected.
DavideNL 3y ago
Looks nice, was disappointed with the analytics/telemetry however... Also i found the website to be quite chaotic. I'd prefer something better organized and informative.
Svarto 3y ago
"any-sync networks are permissionless. This means that anyone who knows the IP and port of the coordinator node can connect to it, create new spaces, or download existing encrypted objects. Data inside spaces is always secure, as it requires space encryption keys to read it." From the docs on self-hosting. I am not a security expert, does anyone know if this is still considered safe? Feels weird that anyone can download my data, even if it is encrypted
- benabbottnz 3y ago
  Surely that’s just the nature of IPFS, right?
  - ianopolous 3y ago
    Not necessarily. You can add auth at the encrypted block level: https://peergos.org/posts/bats https://peergos.org/posts/bats
Lorak_ 3y ago
Do you plan to create native desktop app? Android app looks and feels good, but the desktop one is terribly slow (especially scrolling), probably due to being written in TS... I used Linux AppImage version if that matters.
chunsj 3y ago
I think this is a great application/service. You can have source code, self-hosting, and construct your own network of your devices. Nice work, thank you. Maybe some kind of P2P network support web browser - without someone's server - would be nice but this does require so much more work, I assume.
iudqnolq 3y ago
Not to write the classic Dropbox comment, but can't you just do this with any of the notion alternatives based around local markdown files (i.e. obsidian, logseq). Just have local e2e encryption on your laptop and point the app at a shared folder with in-transit encryption (i.e. Syncthing).
- monkmartinez 3y ago
  You can, but it is definitely not a download and go situation. I use Syncthing for Obsidian and it generally works well. However, I was recently in need to use a VPN on both sides of the "sync" and it choked hard. Made me miss onenote...
  - iudqnolq 3y ago
    To be fair this looks like an open source project that aims to be download and go some day, not something there today
- esperent 3y ago
  Yes but it's a lot of hassle to set up on Android. No idea about iPhone. And if you think that's fine for you, cool. But now imagine trying to set that up for a shared knowledge system. It's just not feasible.
  - iudqnolq 3y ago
    Oh absolutely this sucks. Just not sure Anytype is any better. It doesn't support sharing, for example. Logseq + SyncThing just works on Android, you simply point both at the same folder. Presumably that's impossible on iPhone.
    - esperent 3y ago
      > It doesn't support sharing Well this release doesn't but it's kind a beta by the look of things. Team wiki/company knowledge is definitely on their roadmap and one of their major selling points.
eviks 3y ago
Is non-Electron client not on the Roadmap? That's a big missing piece in the puzzle of great note taking alternative
ninjachen 3y ago
Great, I really want a offline version of Notion, and asked the official guys from 2019 to now. Thanks for your sharing!
r0bbie 3y ago
So firstly - been an Anytype beta user for a while here, and it's great to see the launch! And how far Anytype has come on recently - a previous frustration admittedly was that the app and data sync could feel quite sluggish at times, and the latest release is way snappier and feels more stable! Excited to see how the project develops. I did want to echo some of the points already raised regarding licensing.. From the outset, when I heard of the Anytype project some time ago, the whole thing that got me excited about it, and why I've been following it so attentively for so long, was the promise of an "open source, privacy-first, p2p, Notion alternative". While I'm sure we can all respect the licensing model you've settled on from a commercial perspective, and being source-available with select open source components is far more welcome over a fully closed model, it clearly does not make the project as a whole open source. While that's quite disappointing, it's positive to see you're acknowledging this and tweaking how you present the open source nature of the project to accurately reflect! I did just want to ask however if you might have considered a licensing model similar to a project like Sentry? They also fully open source select components under permissive licences (MIT/Apache), but for key commercial elements they instead adopt the Business Source Licence (https://open.sentry.io/licensing/ https://open.sentry.io/licensing/). This is very similar to the terms of your "Any Source Available License" in allowing personal use but restricting commercial use, with the very key caveat that it only enforces these restrictions for a period of 36 months, after which point the licence for those elements reverts to Apache 2.0. Such a restriction would in theory protect commercial interests in a similar manner (only code from more than 36 months ago, or whatever delay preferred, is fully open sourced), but make the project far more open in spirit, and critically allay concerns Anytype will otherwise attract as a non open source project. For example - what happens if Anytype go closed in future once people are already bought in / if the organisation or development ceases at some point / if some decision was to be made in future which compromises user privacy or security, etc! A key element of open source is that trust doesn't just come from saying "trust me, honest!", but also from the licensing model - if the project disappears or is somehow compromised, it can be forked. Such a licence would allow this (with a delay!) Might you have considered such a license, and if so would be curious your thoughts on why that isn't your preferred approach?
hamsterbase 3y ago
In terms of PKM applications, believe CRDT is the future。 In response to this, I've developed a "read later" app based on CRDT. The following are my expectations for knowledge management software, as well as the goals I had in mind when designing this application: 1. I want my data to be stored locally so that I can access it anytime and anywhere, thus eliminating the need for expensive hard drives. 2. I hope the software can be purchased for a one-time fee, rather than by subscription. Since all the data is stored locally, this indicates that there are no additional costs for the developers. Therefore, I believe a one-time payment would suffice. At the same time, I'm open to the game DLC model, where enhanced features can be obtained through additional payments. 3. I hope the software can support synchronization so that I can access the most recent data on any device.
syngrog66 3y ago
vim. cat. less. grep. find. wc. git. (and so on...) life is better (TM) kids: get off my lawn

414 points by TTTZ 3y ago

That website looks horrible.

I had been using Anytype for some time but a big disadvantage is it requires a standalone app = Not possible on a corporate laptop. What I use is VSCode with Foam - a colleague uses Dendron. Has the advantage that I can also use GitHub Copilot or local LLMs for autocompletion. Imho the combo is better for pure writing and building quick connections between documents

MadaboutDana 3y ago

Interesting to read about AnyType's supposedly poor import of MD files – I imported a folder of MD files (from one of my large Obsidian repositories) with no problems whatsoever, at (very) impressive speed. So not quite sure what's going on there. In short: works for me ;-)

mgrandl 3y ago

Just downloaded it. This looks incredibly polished and smooth! Will play around with it a bit, although I have never been good at taking notes.

Eric_WVGG 3y ago
iOS version is very well-crafted, but the type on iPad Mini is much, much too small. (I say that as a person who generally prefers small type.)

digdugdirk 3y ago

I see this software has tables - are these able to be used like excel sheets? I see this as a necessity for software like this. It's the one feature that Notion has that the competition doesn't seem to have, and it's absolutely crucial to everyday work for so many people. It seems to be a blind spot for programmer-types, I'm guessing because they see Excel as limited?

TTTZ 3y ago
I don't think Notion has formulas for tables. I think you mean formulas for databases. The formulas for databases like Notion has is actually the second-most requested feature right now and is tagged as Acknowledged, so hopefully we will get it soon.
niam 3y ago
Coda has the most powerful tables I've seen of the Notion alternatives, and was a fair bit cheaper for my team since they don't charge per viewer or editor but per "creator". But unfortunately it's not open-source or local. They have a pretty good [writeup](https://coda.io/blog/productivity/tables-not-spreadsheets https://coda.io/blog/productivity/tables-not-spreadsheets) on why "spreadsheets" were avoided in favor of more traditional "tables" (a la RDBMS).
squirtlebonflow 3y ago
[dead]
sharipova 3y ago
(co-founder anytype here) tables are simple now, no formulas. Plan to add formulas to data-bases (what I think you mean by notion having it) - it's one of the top requested features on our forum

ChrisClark 3y ago

I've been using this for about a year. It's very polished and been stable for me. The Apple and Android apps work well too. They've been planning to open source it from the beginning, I'm glad it's finally here. I'm using it as a very basic note system, nothing fancy like others are doing though.

jitl 3y ago

(I work at Notion) The Anytype model is really cool - in a way, they’ve rebuilt Lotus Notes with 21st century E2E encrypted protocols and technology. They’ve built a really solid personal knowledge app with many of Notion’s features - and some clear improvements over Notion. However they also demonstrate the complexity and tradeoffs of the E2E approach. Anytype has been a work-in-progress since at least 2019. Their docs still state: > Future versions will allow you to share your work and safely collaborate with others > There's no browser version of the app. Anytype is a stand-alone software, that works on desktop or mobile devices. There are many points of vulnerability in-browser apps that would compromise our commitment to data security and encryption. Without these features Anytype is in a much smaller market (PKM) with less distribution than Notion/Coda/Dropbox Paper/Quip/Confluence/…

kwanbix 3y ago
It is so interesting that you are mentioning Lotus Notes because that is exactly what I was thinking when I was setting up our Confluence pages: it is exactly like Lotus Notes' Knowledge Base template, with some additional funtionality. Crazy how we keep reinventing things. By the way, and this is just my point of view: we moved from Notion to Confluence because Notion has no free tier for small teams (4 people). We were working on a project for a not-for profit org and their money is always tight. Since you already give Notion free, have you ever evaluating doing like Atlassian that up to 10 (or 5) people the thing is free?
lewisjoe 3y ago
Google Docs have somehow solved E2E encryption with safe sharing and collaboration. They haven't advertised it much, just a mention here and there as an enterprise requirement or something, it's good how they've implemented it on top of an existing web-first collaboration product. They do have technical challenges implementing add-on services on top of content - For example, the grammar checker or any content assistance is disabled in E2E encrypted docs, which makes sense. Surprisingly they support spellcheck: I guess they are shipping dictionaries to browsers and use a local lookup. (Google Docs doesn't rely on browser's dictionary because their editor is not based on `contenteditable`)

taminka 3y ago

i've been following anytype since 2019, when the initial public release plan was for autumn of 2020 (lol), and since then it has transitioned from being a libp2p based google docs alternative into something more complicated, with relationships, sets, etc, and tbh i just never use it, because it's become too complicated every time i open the app, which uses electron btw ;(, i catch myself looking at the explainer videos sent out, explaining all the concepts, it's a tool that (for me personally) gets in the way of actually doing anything a lot; maybe there are people for whom this is an optimal setup, but if you're looking for a privacy-friendly google doc alternative, this is not it imo

qbasic_forever 3y ago
It really is amazing how little competition Google docs has with free or open tools. I just want something that lets me write a never ending river of rich text documents. I don't want to write markdown source (by default), I don't want a "preview" as I type, etc.--I want WYSIWYG. I don't want to micromanage folders and hierarchies and classifications and tags and whatnot, I don't even want to think about storage or files. Just an app that instantly starts, lets me capture rich text, and search through documents. I've never found anything close to that outside Google docs and it's frustrating.
- taminka 3y ago
  real a libp2p based wysiwyg or even a plaintext app with p2p sync + works offline + encrypted + cross device sync + collaboration with other users would be invaluable
- ukuina 3y ago
  Google Docs being free probably has a lot to do with the lack of competition.
- catapart 3y ago
  Would you need to manage page settings, like margins and tab stops, or are those things more than you need? If it really is just a local-first, rich text editor with syncing, searchable documents that you need, there might be something on the horizon. But if you need a full blown document editor, that's a bit of a different story. Anything more than formatted text and inline images changes the scope in pretty exponential ways.

derbOac 3y ago

Can someone explain this is — what it does and what it's used for? I'm not familiar with Notion at all and the page — which basically says you can use it for everything — is not helpful in this regard. It sounds like a P2P shared note and document app but it's not clear to me.

pshirshov 3y ago
It is a P2P note taking app with some object-oriented modeling capabilities.
squirtlebonflow 3y ago
It's much more complicated than that and that's it's biggest downside. I've been trying to learn how to use it but it's quite confusing figuring out their terminology and UI. One thing that I did with it was make a Recipe type that has any number of Ingredient types in it, takes any number or arbitrary Dietary Restriction tags (e.g. Gluten, Dairy, Vegan), and takes parameters like cooking time and number of servings etc. So not only is a Recipe a note that explains how to make it, but it has a template with the boilerplate information pre-filled so when writing down a new Recipe, it's faster, and it has all that metadata, which allows you to construct Sets from the Recipes. For example, I can have a document called Quick Vegan Crowd-Pleasers that is a Set of all vegan Recipes with cooking time under 30 minutes and 8+ servings. If I really wanted to go psycho mode with it, I could track every ingredient currently in my kitchen and filter recipes by what I can make with what I have on hand. You can really do a lot with it. It's just time intensive to set up and also to keep up with entering data.
rchaud 3y ago
Think of it as a CMS with custom fields and widgets, for a personal website or knowledgebase.
catapart 3y ago
"Knowledgebase apps" try to reconcile the fact that people (most people? all people?) think in sporadic and unstructured ways with the fact that maintaining data is mostly about codifying it into a structure. So, instead of forcing a person to think "which app do I need to start getting some ideas sketched out", the app wants people to use it and then do whatever makes sense to them as a means of dumping all of the disparate knowledge into a bag so that it can be recalled, even if unstructured, later. In an idealized example: if a writer got an idea, they would whip open the knowledgebase app and then... - they might begin writing a list of characters and start detailing their relationships. - they might upload a few photos of their local environment for remembering setting details, later. - they might open a 'canvas' and put together a rough drawing of a new spaceship design they're mulling over. - they might start working out the economy of their world by drafting an accounting table and assigning the trade networks. The idea being that if any one of those tasks leads to any of the others (an inevitability), it's nice to just be able to scroll down the page and start on the new data without having to think "okay, which app do should I put this in"? So, overall, it's about velocity of data recording. Some people just don't work that fast, or would prefer to consider HOW to think about an idea before they want to consider the idea, itself. So, for them, this may seem a bit like overkill. But there are definitely people whom can be far more productive if they can bounce around storing data as it surfaces in their mind, rather than when they have time to categorize it.

ocrow 3y ago

I'm not familiar with Notion. How does this compare to something like Obsidian?

arapacana 3y ago
Their philosophies are quite different; Obsidian is much more text and link oriented (it's basically a front-end for markdown), whereas Notion is object-oriented and gives primacy to the kinds of objects that can contain text (blocks, tables, quotes, etc.) Obsidian can be made to work like Notion and vice-versa, but I see Obsidian as more of a hypertext environment/wiki creator, and Notion as an integrated environment to interface with different ways of interacting with knowledge-focused objects. I prefer Obsidian largely due to its simplicity, and the fact that it maps really well to how I think. Notion is also incredible for what it does, but it's too much for my brain, and the app is still a bit too slow for the speed with which my thoughts can escape me. Anytype purports to be like Notion.
PurpleRamen 3y ago
Obsidian is plaintext, Notion is richtext. This means, it's simpler to write complex documents in Notion and you don't need to know and handle complicated syntax. Which is good complex stuff like layout, tables, images. Anytype seems to have the same richtext-interface. But with obsidian on the other side, editing can be faster, if you know your syntax, and can type well. And unlike obsidian, Notion has no direct mechanism for extension, which means there is no way to modify the app, or extend Notion-Documents with new types of data. There is an indirect way, by embedding urls, which comes with some limitations, and ultimatly it means you are depending on other servers, which comes with some more problems. Not sure how anytype supports extensions.
- sharipova 3y ago
  Anytype aims to be an open ecosystem. We open the source code. Now will announce the contributor program. We will start with translations and gallery of templates, then imports/data adaptors, then design themes and extensions.

pshirshov 3y ago

In contrast with many others crappy things (Notion, Standard Notes, Joplin, Notesnook, Obsidian, etc, etc, etc, I tried literally dozens of notetaking apps, including some self-hosted stuff), Anytype is, at least, barely acceptable. It can be used to write notes and share them between devices, it can be used in offline mode, it is cross-platform, it has acceptable navigation and more or less good editor with proper code highlighting. Also, you don't have to share your content with server owners. The UX isn't that nice at this point (especially the graph view which is totally useless if you have at least hundreds of objects) but, again, that's something acceptable and it's free (at least for now).

nashashmi 3y ago

One thing I found amazing about Notion was how nicely my Evernote was imported in. Can I do the same here

sharipova 3y ago
not yet, we have very limited import options at the moment (notion, markdown, csv and protobuf). This surely limits our activation > not easy to start. We are working on more import options and also plan to publish an API and hope our community helps to build more options together with us

ch_sm 3y ago

I haven‘t tried it yet, but damnit, you guys really touched a nerve with the aesthetics of the landing page and the references to personal computer pioneers. It gives me OpenDoc vibes. I‘m so easily manipulated.

deleted 3y ago
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mickelsen 3y ago
It was motivating a few years ago, when I started to see all these references to Engelbart and better thinking and whatnot, but after testing a bunch of projects that amount to nothing, get abandoned or in a state of eternal coming-soon walled garden building, where even some of them already closed (Roam Research, Athens) it got tiring. And I still don't have that promised knowledge-tool-of-the-future in my hands, just some hype with note graphs, prolix bloggers and their 'creative mentation', yet none of the implementations (not the concepts themselves) have proven to be any sort of breakthrough, or usable enough, where commercial last-generation notetaking and journaling tools managed better at a certain point. It's time to get real, folks! If they can't deliver on their promises, they don't deserve our attention. I'll stick with what actually works, even if it's not as flashy. Rant over.

PurpleRamen 3y ago

Why does this smell like a cult? Talking about trust and having illusive pictures and designs.. And why do I need to login for an offline app? Where does the data really go? There is some setting remote storage, and some mb already used, so is in reallity an online-app with some offline-mirroring? But it seems there is not a choice to set the local storage-path, and the saved files are just your usual electron-blob-files. Seems there is no way to really access or control my files externally. This doesn't give much impression to be trustable.

jordiburgos 3y ago
I think the same. I was trying to find the "How to install the server" but here is no option. It just saves the data in their servers. There is too many wording about security and control, but only in their control.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pronkin 3y ago
  Here is the link with the instructions https://tech.anytype.io/how-to/self-hosting https://tech.anytype.io/how-to/self-hosting
  - taink 3y ago
    That's useless if the client also sends the same data to Any's node. You can't disable that for now: Self-hosting only without a backup node is currently unavailable The self-hosting-only feature is not released yet. If you don’t want to use Anytype node and instead use p2p sync between your devices, you can block Anytype network traffic (Anytype & Anytype Helper) via your firewall. From https://doc.anytype.io/d/data-and-security/data-storage-and-deletion https://doc.anytype.io/d/data-and-security/data-storage-and-...
    - pronkin 3y ago
      The idea that you can compile apps with your network configuration, so it's not easy, but it works.

catapart 3y ago

This is awesome! Love to see more local-first, security-focused apps! Especially ones that are free. Asking because I'm currently working on a local-first app that I am gaming out how to sync to non-local networks: The docs state that the app syncs to local P2P networks. Does that mean it doesn't sync across the internet? If so, is that because of the cost of maintaining/renting a TURN server? Or is there a technical limitation? If it does sync across the open internet, are there restrictions to that? Sorry for the grilling! It's just an area of interest at the right time. In trying to come up with a WebRTC solution, I think I've settled on defeat. The local network syncing works like a charm, but I haven't had any luck in trying to get around a TURN server by using an API endpoint to provide routing data. It would be nice if there were other prebuilts than COTURN (something deployable to a deno/node server would be ideal), but with what we currently have, I think I've settled on just pushing the encrypted data through my api server, letting users encrypt and decrypt with well-known hashing, based on some key they provide in each client (exporting client and importing client; they never exchange keys). Anyway, my pet projects aside, this thing looks really full-featured! Great work here. I use Notion, daily, and this could easily replace it for me. In fairness, I don't take full advantage of Notion, but I doubt most people do either. Seems like you've covered enough of the bases to provide a real product for all but some edge cases, so that's pretty awesome! I'll echo others in lamenting a web app; that's what will keep me from switching from Notion, because its just not portable enough for the work I do. But, otherwise, I'm happy with it so far. Gonna try to plan some stuff in it and see if there are any creaky wheels!

16bitvoid 3y ago
> Does that mean it doesn't sync across the internet? They currently host their own backup node, so it does sync across the internet, but you only get 1GB of storage (or 10GB if you were in the alpha) on their backup node. Once that's exceeded, additional files are only synced P2P. They're planning on providing extra storage for a cost and soon anyone will be able to self-host their own backup node.
- catapart 3y ago
  Right; should have been more specific, thanks! I meant to ask if the app syncs P2P over the internet, rather than just through their provided storage. My solution is to have short-lived data so that they can't reach more than a few MBs of memory on my server, but if there's a straightforward way to do P2P across the globe, I'd very much prefer that option. Asking people to believe that I can't look at their (encrypted) data is fine, but preventing me from having their data at all is ideal. Given what you pointed out, I definitely figure they're not doing WWW P2P syncing, but you'd be surprised the technical stuff you can figure out by just asking someone who spent way too long building it. They're usually happy to tell you all kinds of interesting details (especially when it comes to 'interesting' bugs/workarounds/hacks)!

c7DJTLrn 3y ago

>Computer pioneers Nice to see Ted Nelson getting some recognition.

deleted 3y ago

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pgeorgi 3y ago

Note, their idea[0] of "open source" doesn't match the popular Open Source Definition [1] [0] https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-kotlin/blob/main/LICENSE.md https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-kotlin/blob/main/LICENSE... [1] https://opensource.org/osd/ https://opensource.org/osd/

kykeonaut 3y ago
Hence why the "free" in "Free and Open Source Software" really matters. :)
- sydon 3y ago
  Damn, didn't even think about that.
- npteljes 3y ago
  Not really, someone could just use that misleadingly too, just as with "open source". "Open Source" already doesn't cover these special licenses, instead, the "source available" is used. Any also acknowledges this actually - the license they are using is called the "Any Source Available License 1.0".
  - kykeonaut 3y ago
    After a bit of brushing up on my acronyms, one could indeed use FOSS or FLOSS to denote that a piece of software is either free (or libre) or just open source [0]. The term "open source" is not referring to software with a free license, but to software whose source code is available to the public irrespective of license [1]. [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
    - pgeorgi 3y ago
      That article you post as [1] refers to https://opensource.org/osd/ https://opensource.org/osd/ for "The official definition of open source software (which is published by the Open Source Initiative and is too long to include here)" The FSF article directly follow with this, which contradicts your claim: "However, the obvious meaning for the expression “open source software” is “You can look at the source code.” Indeed, most people seem to misunderstand “open source software” that way. (The clear term for that meaning is “source available.”) That criterion is much weaker than the free software definition, much weaker also than the official definition of open source. It includes many programs that are neither free nor open source." And the OSD also disagrees: "The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software." Terms that can be summarized as "whose source code is available to the public" are called "source available", even by the FSF.

menacingly 3y ago

This is really nice, but I think the perennial curse of technology people is producing "<app>, but with <esoteric principle>" People want a thing, not an ideal, and they'll sell their soul to get the thing. At this point, it's actually being surprised by this that is the ludicrous position. Philosophies are a differentiator for a very small portion of population. If you want them to buy into ideals, you've taken on two problems: Make a thing they want with its own differentiators outside of the noble pursuit, _and_ trojan in your principles.

cj 3y ago
Normally I would agree with this. But with Notion in particular, and how heavily they're pushing Notion AI, I could see some c-level exec types being uncomfortable with the idea of Notion (or any managed/hosted service) to store trade secrets, company IP, etc. When a company is pushing AI features as heavily as Notion is, it raises questions how Notion is planning to (or already using) your private data for fine tuning, model training, potentially scooping up your company's IP in the process.
- sharipova 3y ago
  Those who don’t think it matters already have a choice of great products. We try to build a better alternative to those who think it does. We also think it’s our job to make the ux great, to make sn analogy we think a healthy and tasty food is a better value proposition which for a network is very important.
Qwertious 3y ago
This is true, and I sometimes wonder if the only true solution is regulation or overhauling IP or such. But I don't see that happening, because proprietary software is too large and frankly libre software isn't asshole-proof enough for capitalism.
- menacingly 3y ago
  My preference would be using this tendency the other way. Make it so good they can't resist it, even if they accidentally eat their vegetables along the way.

iFire 3y ago

I don't understand this license. It's not open-source. https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-ts/blob/main/LICENSE.md https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-ts/blob/main/LICENSE.md

pronkin 3y ago
Co-founder of anytype is here. The most of are repos are open-source. We have our philosophy regarding open source here https://blog.anytype.io/our-open-philosophy/ https://blog.anytype.io/our-open-philosophy/ Happy to discuss concerns regarding our approach.
- icy 3y ago
  Yeah no, that's not how open-source works. Your license is effectively a "source available" license and not officially approved by the OSI: https://opensource.org/licenses/ https://opensource.org/licenses/
- iFire 3y ago
  I don't see your license on this list -- https://opensource.org/licenses/ https://opensource.org/licenses/ Please don't advertise anytype as open-source.
- cjbprime 3y ago
  This is not an open source license: https://opensource.org/osd/ https://opensource.org/osd/ 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
- pierrefermat1 3y ago
  He literally voiced a concern and you just completed ignored it by linking a BS corporate speak page. You are available on Github which doesn't = open-source Also why only most and not all?
koushikg 3y ago

emptysongglass 3y ago

I'm sorry to hijack the thread but as someone forced to use Notion as a team wiki, please improve the performance! I can't emphasize this enough. The Notion subreddit is filled with complaints: if that's not a wake up call to every single PM at Notion, I don't know what is. Stop shipping features until the perf is a joy to your users. It's mind-boggling to me that companies would prio anything over fixing perf outside of fixing bugs. Notion is the single biggest frustration of any workplace tool I've ever used in my entire software career and it all comes down to its performance.

dilap 3y ago
yeah i hate the slow perf too, but their success in the market unfortunately i think validates the "features over perf" strategy (also, as slow as it is now, it's MUCH faster than it used to be, if you can imagine that!)
littlestymaar 3y ago
> Notion is the single biggest frustration of any workplace tool I've ever used in my entire software career and it all comes down to its performance. Even worse than JIRA, or MS Teams? That sounds horrible indeed.
- ponyous 3y ago
  Not in my experience. Notion is faster than Jira. But we don't have super massive wikis, hundreds of pages at most.
- emptysongglass 3y ago
  Yes, worse but it depends on what type of page you're working in. If it's of medium complexity and up, it's worse (a few media elements, maybe a database, etc.) If it's just text, it's faster than JIRA or Teams.
  - nXqd 3y ago
    I have the same problem, I understand the enjoyment of sales / marketing team when it comes to using Notion, but for engineering team, it's just horrible, so slow.

replwoacause 3y ago

I’ve been on the waitlist to try this for close to 5 years and never once received an email. Now, it is available for everyone to try…so I just installed it. Looks nice enough, but it is too similar to Notion for my taste and since I don’t like using Notion I don’t think I would like using this. I’ll stick with Obsidian because I value the flexibility it gives me (running my own code, customizing everything, etc.)

sharipova 3y ago
This is how the email system works. We invited everyone from our waitlist ahead of the beta. But we can’t control email deliverability. We know that several % of our letters never reach recipients, but have no influence how to change that. Very annoying. And sorry you didn’t get your invitation
- replwoacause 3y ago
  Yeah... no it isn't. Blaming people's email servers is the wrong move here. I've used Fastmail.com for the last 5 years, I keep my inbox at 0 and I look at my spam folder every week. I've never had an issue receiving email before. And by the way, over those years I signed up for the beta multiple times. All kinds of wild shit makes it through to my email, so there's no way your invite got bounced. Good luck.

rodrigodlu 3y ago

Painful to import things from Logseq or Obsidian. It imports one md at a time, and the 'zip' thing does not click me. It seem to focus too much on individual collections and pages and investing time upfront thinking about how to organize and navigate. Awesome replacement for some things I had in OneNote, thou. Like an easy personal wiki. But logseq (and as a second choice obsidian) is taking my heart because the activation energy cost is really low to just start writing notes, the flow seems more natural. It's really an alternative to notion and maybe onenote, but not to whom just want to write more freely and easily finding things later then reorganizing what it's still important with some plugins and keyboard shortcuts (auto/semiauto moving blocks from one md to another). For instance, daily notes: I don't want to put a title. Just give me the current date, and ability to see previous days in a few keystrokes, some tags for the blocks I'm taking note, that will help me find the related blocks and pages later. The P2P sync is what made me try the first place. It's working fine, nice! I did a similar thing with logseq + syncthing, and all my notes are plain files. I can't find the format anytype is using. The local working folder just looks like a standard chrome/electron folder with everything inside. Unusable for my own backup purposes. Nice to know about in general, ty!

sharipova 3y ago
(co-founder of anytype) thank you for this feedback! Totally agree, that import sucks - very few options. We plan to improve the import and also publish an API to engage our community of contributors to help us build and improve more of them. on titles of daily notes - again, well spotted - again, we have plans to improve :) happy you liked p2p sync - this was the main objective and the next big thing here is multi-player based on p2p
kirso 3y ago
Logseq's journal is the biggest productivity hack we got that we never thought we needed. Don't know where to put the idea, note or just a scribble? You have a 2022-05-12 page without the cognitive load or confusion.
- matthiaswh 3y ago
  Let's be cautious where we attribute credit. Daily journaling has been a thing for, oh, centuries. At the very least Zim has had the same journal feature dating back over a decade. I'm sure others can't point to similar software stretching back at least another decade before that.

jrm4 3y ago

Everything about this smells like "we're going to say we're open-source and that you're always fully in control" and then you read the fine print and find out there's some way to rugpull or some other barrier that will screw the user. At this stage, having seen so many of these things, I'm comfortable disbelieving them outright WITHOUT reading further.

number6 3y ago
My feeling to: feels like a free sample and then they will lock you in
- sharipova 3y ago
  (co-founder of anytype) the whole purpose of anytype is user autonomy from software provider. The data standard is open. The code is open. You can self-host your network of backup nodes (tech skills required as this is self-hosting alpha released this week). The app is local first with p2p sync (you remove the back up node, you still have your data and still have sync in local networks). Most importantly you control the keys - encryption keys, access to your account - this is not touched by anytype - noone can block you out of your account, no central registry of users, all these. There are two principles for our business model: self-sustinability - support a community of contributors to improve the product and build this positive fly wheel and universal accessibility - anyone can use anytype for free if they use their resources. I hope all of this decisions deserve attention and reveal our intention (they are not accidental things)
  - jrm4 3y ago
    If you care to answer then -- what is the thing that you provide that I must pay for? As in, if I don't give you money, then I don't get ....
    - sharipova 3y ago
      You can use anytype for free if you use your own resources (storage, backup). There is an option to selfhost, or just use locally with local sync. You can also become a member of our association and it’s membership based, it will give you backup (if you don’t want to handle it yourself) and some things on top for those who want their spaces to be discoverable in our network. If you use privately for your team/org you may not be interested in paying. That’s ok with us :) joining the association and paying is voluntary. We have a principal of universal accessibility

mingalieva 3y ago

Very nice and well developed product. I've been using it for a while! Glad that it's public and has a mobile app now! I've been a heavy user of Notion, finally, there is a better and more secured alternative!

chambers 3y ago

The proportion of philosophy to features in their marketing seems off. They say "trust our code, not our words" and then spend several paragraphs of words talking up their ideals. It feels like something is being hidden or talked around. Data-independence may be one aspect that's not transparent. Compared to https://obsidian.md/ https://obsidian.md/, I can't just use raw Markdown or CSV file with Anytype. I've paid Obsidian $300+ just because it's data independence with a few obvious strings attached. By the same token, if I pursued a local-version of Notion for my team, I would also want the same freedom that local, open-standard files offer.

pronkin 3y ago
Anytype's functionality cannot operate using Markdown or CSV, as these formats are limited for our specific use-cases. Instead, we've defined our data format in a protobuf file, which is open and MIT-licensed. You can always compile a version yourself and use your data without relying on Anytype. We hope to include data adaptors in future developments
fabifabulous 3y ago
Markdown sucks in some ways though. Not being able to merge cells in tables? Come on.
junipertea 3y ago
To be fair, you can compile the code (including the protobuf format) and implement your own export to any format. It's a bit obtuse, but I had a obsidian vault full of markdown files that are also completely useless as they have a bunch metadata that needs the obsidian plugin to render. This is not a critique of obsidian, but there is a limit of markdown and obsidian is bypassing it using a lot of extra code. If obsidian got deleted from the internet, I would have my markdown files but a lot of the processing would be gone. If we were to store markdowns only with linking and no advanced tables, do we need any advanced app on top?
koushikg 3y ago
Obsidian as I recall, is closed source, and they give some weird non reasons for that, so it’s not radical to assume they’re doing something ‘not in the open’, so not a good contender when talking about owning your data and data independence! Moreover, the statements just meant you don’t have to take our ‘words’ for it, here’s the proof. And in a different context, developers explained their motivations and what they’re inspired by, to work on this kind of software. There’s absolutely no over the top ‘marketing’ to any type as well, as they explained in different post, they don’t want to market, buy built in customer base with VC money and so on.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

say_it_as_it_is 3y ago

Marketed with "Trust our code" , but doesn't share it?

TTTZ 3y ago
Here is their github with repos https://github.com/anyproto https://github.com/anyproto
- say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
  Those are client libraries, not server
  - pronkin 3y ago
    Here we are https://github.com/anyproto/any-sync https://github.com/anyproto/any-sync

moneywoes 3y ago

How do you make money

sharipova 3y ago

hey everyone, Zhanna - co-founder of anytype here (with my co-founder Anton also here). If you have questions or feedback, we are here to answer and listen :)

idmontie 3y ago

"There's no browser version of the app. Anytype is a stand-alone software, that works on desktop or mobile devices. There are many points of vulnerability in-browser apps that would compromise our commitment to data security and encryption." What does this even mean? How does having a mobile app mean more security than a web app? Are they worried about browser extensions? Or is this just an excuse not to host on the web?

hresvelgr 3y ago

I've been using this heavily, it's a good tool. Some of how it works is not intuitive coming from Notion but the docs are good enough that I got up to speed promptly. Anytype feels joyful to use in a similar way to Notion but without weight of Notion's mountain of features. It's got the right amount of focused functionality. There's some QoL issues present which annoy me, but they're nitpicks at best. Some things I would like to see would be alternate card previews for objects, and perhaps some options on organising/separating disconnected graphs, but I would be perfectly happy without, the functionality present is wonderfully spartan and I think I'd weep if it became a feature behemoth like Notion.

sdesol 3y ago

Here's some project health insights, for those interested. https://devboard.gitsense.com/anyproto https://devboard.gitsense.com/anyproto https://reviews.gitsense.com/insights/github?q=pull-age%3A%3C%3D120&t=crc-insights&tb=all&v=anyproto%2Fanytype-heart%20----%20anyproto%2Fanytype-kotlin%20----%20anyproto%2Fanytype-swift%20----%20anyproto%2Fanytype-swift-codegen%20----%20anyproto%2Fanytype-ts%3A%3Agithub%3Aanyproto%2Fanytype-heart%2Cgithub%3Aanyproto%2Fanytype-kotlin%2Cgithub%3Aanyproto%2Fanytype-swift%2Cgithub%3Aanyproto%2Fanytype-swift-codegen%2Cgithub%3Aanyproto%2Fanytype-ts%3A%3A%3A%3A%3A%3A1689866756032 https://reviews.gitsense.com/insights/github?q=pull-age%3A%3... Looks like Jira is used for issue tracking, so insights for issues and comments will be incomplete. There also appears to be a good mix of seasoned contributors (2+ years) and new (look for the gift icon in the review tool to see how long they have been contributing). Full Disclosure: This is my tool

mdaniel 3y ago
are you aware that the GH org parsing is apparently case sensitive? https://devboard.gitsense.com/jetbrains https://devboard.gitsense.com/jetbrains = blank https://devboard.gitsense.com/JetBrains https://devboard.gitsense.com/JetBrains = works (although it does whine about the number of repos)
- sdesol 3y ago
  Yeah this is something I'll need to fix. Also, the repos limit is to keep resources in check. For example, crunching 5000 repos for Microsoft takes about 10 minutes and ties up 8 out of 20 query threads. Thanks for the feedback.

khobragade 3y ago

I tried this briefly about a year ago but didn't see myself using it. They had an hour long induction session over zoom to teach how to use the tool before they sent the download link iirc. It was too complicated. Moved on to Zotero and text/plain files for my notetaking and journaling needs ever since.

hosh 3y ago

I like the Notion and Confluence UIs. Are there tools for importing from Evernote? Does this have mobile apps? And I assume, if I want to back it up somewhere, I can set up a peer that would sync from my devices? A UI specific for journals is a huge selling point for me. That's like 80% of my use of Evernotes.

adr1an 3y ago

Here's another notion open source alternative: https://affine.pro/ https://affine.pro/

hosh 3y ago
Although a big selling point for Anytype is that it is local-first. My main gripe with Evernote now, is that in its effort to be a collaborative app, there is a lot of network latency for edits on my mobile device. By comparison, NotesNook is local-first and super fast.
- adr1an 3y ago
  I forgot to mention, affine.pro is self-hostable too... and it doesn't require any account registration whatsoever on their website.
  - hosh 3y ago
    What I mean by “local-first” is not the same as “self-host”. Local-first software are architected in a way where the local device is the source of truth. It usually uses CDRTs or something like git to sync with other peers. It is not a client-server architecture. Uploading files to a personal server is more of designating the server as a peer and regularly syncing with it, similar to how git works with remote repos. Local-first architecture allows for better control over what you are storing. For me though, local-first architecture lets me take notes with little latency, and I don’t have to wait for timeouts so that the app realizes it is offline. I just want to get to typing in my note quickly and think about syncs later.
    - mickelsen 3y ago
      Yes, but Affine is local-first. You don't need a container infra or anything, just run locally without an account, data is stored in a user folder.
      - hosh 3y ago

tonymet 3y ago

on one hand it’s good that we have so many note taking apps. it could also signal about a huge gap in the platform that’s not being addressed is it sync, ux , storage , collaboration the fact that we are pivoting note taking an productivity trends every couple years is interesting it could also just be another trend like micro services , nosql, orm , oop– something people do when they need to procrastinate getting work done

6uhrmittag 3y ago

Sorry but the landing page is super annoying. Everything gives the impression of being clickable and not even half of it is. Then I click on "crazy fast loading times" and a slow popups overlay appears.. the slider and the animations are feel deliberately annoying - slow slide.. when a slide is in the center it stops.. takes a deep breath and then is beeing reminded that it has to load it's three arms and bubbles... and all that for explaining in 2 sentence what open source is. (And the overlay not being dismissable with ESC is annoying)

jklinger410 3y ago
The UI for the website reminds me of the app itself. It paints its own canvas and is simplified to the point of adding more confusion.
paddim8 3y ago
The website is horribly over-engineered and makes it look like a crypto scam. Such a shame

hedgehog 3y ago

This looks pretty nice. I use Notion at work and mostly like it but not for personal data because I want everything available to back up on a physical disk. I've been burned too many times with data getting stuck in an inaccessible format when upstream apps get orphaned. Today my primary storage is files on disk in common formats (Markdown, PDFs, JPEGs, etc). Questions: Is there a way to get at the underlying documents stored in Anytype? Is there any path to a web accessible version for clients too small to host the full dataset? Use case is to host around 50GB of notes, records, and photos in one place.

jevogel 3y ago
Currently you can export all files, but there's no way to access them otherwise. They plan on having an API. Right now you're limited to 1GB of storage that they pin on their IPFS node, but they plan to enable self-hosting, i.e., using your own IPFS node. Roadmap on GitHub: https://github.com/orgs/anyproto/projects/1/views/1 https://github.com/orgs/anyproto/projects/1/views/1

Propelloni 3y ago

Don't bother to download if you are unwilling to create an account with their service.

sharipova 3y ago
Account creation happens on your device without an internet connection. Just the encryption key is generated. Anytype does not have a central registry of users. So i think you are misinterpreting it. We have no central registry where you create an account

_visgean 3y ago

Hmm I don't understand whats the benefit of having my notes on p2p network. Usually when it comes to notes I would prefer them to be private. Here I have some vague claim that the cryptographic key is safe enough. Well ok but what is the advantage here? Also the local first approach here just seems like a local storage on a disk. Not great. Essentially if I move notes from notion to here I am going from a service that has a clear API and understandable storage policies to a model where the data is some binary blob on a p2p network.. Idk this to me seems I would effectively have less control over my data.

pronkin 3y ago
By default, your account is created on the machine. You can use it without connecting to any network. We allow you to sync notes in a peer-to-peer way in local networks, or over the Anytype network (or your self-hosted network) via the internet. Currently, you can sync notes among your devices. Soon, you'll be able to collaborate with others using end-to-end encryption. I can't agree that the claim about the key is vague, as there is documentation and code on GitHub. You can check it, and we are happy to hear arguments. We are genuinely implementing a local-first approach. Why do you have doubts? We have a clear description of the data format, which is MIT licensed. Feel free to write and read. We hope that data adaptors will soon be available with the help of the community. You have full control over your data. Compile your version, and that's it.

mostlysimilar 3y ago

Very excited to see an alternative to Notion that checks so many of the boxes I care about, especially local-first control of my data. It would be nice if you would let me opt out of all of your telemetry. I know it's useful for development but I've had to block outbound requests to Sentry, Amplitude, and Graylog already. I would also like the ability to entirely disable cloud-anything, including backup.

TTTZ 3y ago
To allow analytics opt-out is on the roadmap for 2023Q3
- pronkin 3y ago
  You can make a fork, disable analytics and make your own build. We plan to make smooth anlytics opt-out later this year.

beanjuiceII 3y ago

dang these types of website layouts are bad...how can i trust that your app is useful if can't even make a simple easy to read website telling me about your app?

pronkin 3y ago
It's a matter of taste, and ours differs. You can establish trust by going to GitHub, checking the code, and compiling it yourself. In my humble opinion, trust and taste aren't closely connected.

DavideNL 3y ago

Looks nice, was disappointed with the analytics/telemetry however... Also i found the website to be quite chaotic. I'd prefer something better organized and informative.

Svarto 3y ago

"any-sync networks are permissionless. This means that anyone who knows the IP and port of the coordinator node can connect to it, create new spaces, or download existing encrypted objects. Data inside spaces is always secure, as it requires space encryption keys to read it." From the docs on self-hosting. I am not a security expert, does anyone know if this is still considered safe? Feels weird that anyone can download my data, even if it is encrypted

benabbottnz 3y ago
Surely that’s just the nature of IPFS, right?
- ianopolous 3y ago
  Not necessarily. You can add auth at the encrypted block level: https://peergos.org/posts/bats https://peergos.org/posts/bats

Lorak_ 3y ago

Do you plan to create native desktop app? Android app looks and feels good, but the desktop one is terribly slow (especially scrolling), probably due to being written in TS... I used Linux AppImage version if that matters.

chunsj 3y ago

I think this is a great application/service. You can have source code, self-hosting, and construct your own network of your devices. Nice work, thank you. Maybe some kind of P2P network support web browser - without someone's server - would be nice but this does require so much more work, I assume.

iudqnolq 3y ago

Not to write the classic Dropbox comment, but can't you just do this with any of the notion alternatives based around local markdown files (i.e. obsidian, logseq). Just have local e2e encryption on your laptop and point the app at a shared folder with in-transit encryption (i.e. Syncthing).

monkmartinez 3y ago
You can, but it is definitely not a download and go situation. I use Syncthing for Obsidian and it generally works well. However, I was recently in need to use a VPN on both sides of the "sync" and it choked hard. Made me miss onenote...
- iudqnolq 3y ago
  To be fair this looks like an open source project that aims to be download and go some day, not something there today
esperent 3y ago
Yes but it's a lot of hassle to set up on Android. No idea about iPhone. And if you think that's fine for you, cool. But now imagine trying to set that up for a shared knowledge system. It's just not feasible.
- iudqnolq 3y ago
  Oh absolutely this sucks. Just not sure Anytype is any better. It doesn't support sharing, for example. Logseq + SyncThing just works on Android, you simply point both at the same folder. Presumably that's impossible on iPhone.
  - esperent 3y ago
    > It doesn't support sharing Well this release doesn't but it's kind a beta by the look of things. Team wiki/company knowledge is definitely on their roadmap and one of their major selling points.

eviks 3y ago

Is non-Electron client not on the Roadmap? That's a big missing piece in the puzzle of great note taking alternative

ninjachen 3y ago

Great, I really want a offline version of Notion, and asked the official guys from 2019 to now. Thanks for your sharing!

r0bbie 3y ago

So firstly - been an Anytype beta user for a while here, and it's great to see the launch! And how far Anytype has come on recently - a previous frustration admittedly was that the app and data sync could feel quite sluggish at times, and the latest release is way snappier and feels more stable! Excited to see how the project develops. I did want to echo some of the points already raised regarding licensing.. From the outset, when I heard of the Anytype project some time ago, the whole thing that got me excited about it, and why I've been following it so attentively for so long, was the promise of an "open source, privacy-first, p2p, Notion alternative". While I'm sure we can all respect the licensing model you've settled on from a commercial perspective, and being source-available with select open source components is far more welcome over a fully closed model, it clearly does not make the project as a whole open source. While that's quite disappointing, it's positive to see you're acknowledging this and tweaking how you present the open source nature of the project to accurately reflect! I did just want to ask however if you might have considered a licensing model similar to a project like Sentry? They also fully open source select components under permissive licences (MIT/Apache), but for key commercial elements they instead adopt the Business Source Licence (https://open.sentry.io/licensing/ https://open.sentry.io/licensing/). This is very similar to the terms of your "Any Source Available License" in allowing personal use but restricting commercial use, with the very key caveat that it only enforces these restrictions for a period of 36 months, after which point the licence for those elements reverts to Apache 2.0. Such a restriction would in theory protect commercial interests in a similar manner (only code from more than 36 months ago, or whatever delay preferred, is fully open sourced), but make the project far more open in spirit, and critically allay concerns Anytype will otherwise attract as a non open source project. For example - what happens if Anytype go closed in future once people are already bought in / if the organisation or development ceases at some point / if some decision was to be made in future which compromises user privacy or security, etc! A key element of open source is that trust doesn't just come from saying "trust me, honest!", but also from the licensing model - if the project disappears or is somehow compromised, it can be forked. Such a licence would allow this (with a delay!) Might you have considered such a license, and if so would be curious your thoughts on why that isn't your preferred approach?

hamsterbase 3y ago

In terms of PKM applications, believe CRDT is the future。 In response to this, I've developed a "read later" app based on CRDT. The following are my expectations for knowledge management software, as well as the goals I had in mind when designing this application: 1. I want my data to be stored locally so that I can access it anytime and anywhere, thus eliminating the need for expensive hard drives. 2. I hope the software can be purchased for a one-time fee, rather than by subscription. Since all the data is stored locally, this indicates that there are no additional costs for the developers. Therefore, I believe a one-time payment would suffice. At the same time, I'm open to the game DLC model, where enhanced features can be obtained through additional payments. 3. I hope the software can support synchronization so that I can access the most recent data on any device.

syngrog66 3y ago

vim. cat. less. grep. find. wc. git. (and so on...) life is better (TM) kids: get off my lawn