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Obsidian's business model might be genius. Open file formats; closed source. By making a great product, they attract users. Usually the main argument against s

Obsidian's business model might be genius. Open file formats; closed source. By making a great product, they attract users. Usually the main argument against software like this is vendor lock-in. But by using open formats, there's always an escape hatch. If they decided to squeeze their users, I suspect a decent open source alternative would pop up very quickly. In the meantime, casual open source alternatives are very unlikely to catch up in terms of quality and features, because they don't have a funded team working on them full time. On the flipside, Obsidian is incentivized to keep their customers happy, because their moat isn't so large as to allow complete complacency. Overall some of the best aligned incentives I've seen. Though it does make me sad because I feel like we almost never see this good of balance in open source software.

boraoztunc 2y ago
Products are the reflections of their makers. Obsidian is a great example. Happy from the beginning.
abhinavk 2y ago
Yeah. It's one of my most used apps. I pay for Sync to support their model even though I hardly use it on my phone. Apart from no lock-in, another benefit of the open format model is that you can complement it with other tools. Since their code editor is not that great, I just open the vault folder in Vim/VSCode when it becomes cumbersome.
itsjustjoe 2y ago
The third party plugin community is fantastic as well, I use it for GMing TTRPG sessions and I have a pretty powerful workflow built out.
- zappchance 2y ago
  Care to share which plugins you use? I'm interested in GMing some lesser known RPGs.
- throwbmw 2y ago
  Please write a blog about it
- abhinavk 2y ago
  I only wish they be sandboxed or audited before release. It would be perfect.
slightwinder 2y ago
> On the flipside, Obsidian is incentivized to keep their customers happy I think at this point, it's more about people not making unhappy. Development is already slowing down and focusing on fixing bugs, and the community seems to have shrunk to specific areas of interest. Which is kind of a problem IMHO, because we've already seen many add-ons becoming unusable and dying as a result of updates of the main-application.
- chrisweekly 2y ago
  > Development is already slowing down and focusing on fixing bugs Yes - because it's stable and powerful. So grateful they care about quality and are not becoming bloatware / chasing random features. As for the plugin ecosystem, it was always inevitable that a significant portion of them wouldn't be well-maintained and wld become obsolete. As an Obsidian early adopter and heavy daily user, I have only good things to say about the core software and the handful of high-quality community plugins that support every workflow and use case I desire.
  - slightwinder 2y ago
    > Yes - because it's stable and powerful. So grateful they care about quality and are not becoming bloatware / chasing random features. Yes, but this is only good for the satisfied users. Users who wait for certain "promised" features, might slowly become unhappy over time. Other will simply not find what they need. I guess a bit of the problem is that Obsidian exploded in interests far beyond what the devs imaged, and now they are left with multiple different groups which are all not maintained equal well. > As for the plugin ecosystem, it was always inevitable that a significant portion of them wouldn't be well-maintained and wld become obsolete. Then remove them. It's not good if you offer the users add-ons which are not even working anymore.
    - chrisweekly 2y ago
      There's a bright-line distinction between core plugins (official) and community plugins. It's not the core team's responsibility to determine whether someone might be getting value out of a community plugin. TBH it seems like you're trying to find things to complain about, but have yet to raise anything substantive.
soulofmischief 2y ago
Unfortunately, I think it's ultimately unethical to support the normalization of closed-source text-editing software, because it sets a bad precedent for the level of trust a user should have in their computing environment. For this reason, I much prefer Logseq. https://logseq.com/ https://logseq.com/
Grimblewald 2y ago
I compared many options and after being messed around by my last provider which used a closed format making leaving hard, having my entire vault as a folder of files that remain in an open and broadly used format? A dream come true. It ranks among the top products I pay for in terms of absolute satiafaction as well as value add per dollar spent. The community plugins are fantastic, the core plugins are incredibly useful, the whole thing is sleek amd well designed. I cannot express how much I love this produt and the community that has built up around it.

boraoztunc 2y ago

Products are the reflections of their makers. Obsidian is a great example. Happy from the beginning.

abhinavk 2y ago

Yeah. It's one of my most used apps. I pay for Sync to support their model even though I hardly use it on my phone. Apart from no lock-in, another benefit of the open format model is that you can complement it with other tools. Since their code editor is not that great, I just open the vault folder in Vim/VSCode when it becomes cumbersome.

itsjustjoe 2y ago

The third party plugin community is fantastic as well, I use it for GMing TTRPG sessions and I have a pretty powerful workflow built out.

zappchance 2y ago
Care to share which plugins you use? I'm interested in GMing some lesser known RPGs.
throwbmw 2y ago
Please write a blog about it
abhinavk 2y ago
I only wish they be sandboxed or audited before release. It would be perfect.

slightwinder 2y ago

> On the flipside, Obsidian is incentivized to keep their customers happy I think at this point, it's more about people not making unhappy. Development is already slowing down and focusing on fixing bugs, and the community seems to have shrunk to specific areas of interest. Which is kind of a problem IMHO, because we've already seen many add-ons becoming unusable and dying as a result of updates of the main-application.

chrisweekly 2y ago
> Development is already slowing down and focusing on fixing bugs Yes - because it's stable and powerful. So grateful they care about quality and are not becoming bloatware / chasing random features. As for the plugin ecosystem, it was always inevitable that a significant portion of them wouldn't be well-maintained and wld become obsolete. As an Obsidian early adopter and heavy daily user, I have only good things to say about the core software and the handful of high-quality community plugins that support every workflow and use case I desire.
- slightwinder 2y ago
  > Yes - because it's stable and powerful. So grateful they care about quality and are not becoming bloatware / chasing random features. Yes, but this is only good for the satisfied users. Users who wait for certain "promised" features, might slowly become unhappy over time. Other will simply not find what they need. I guess a bit of the problem is that Obsidian exploded in interests far beyond what the devs imaged, and now they are left with multiple different groups which are all not maintained equal well. > As for the plugin ecosystem, it was always inevitable that a significant portion of them wouldn't be well-maintained and wld become obsolete. Then remove them. It's not good if you offer the users add-ons which are not even working anymore.
  - chrisweekly 2y ago
    There's a bright-line distinction between core plugins (official) and community plugins. It's not the core team's responsibility to determine whether someone might be getting value out of a community plugin. TBH it seems like you're trying to find things to complain about, but have yet to raise anything substantive.

soulofmischief 2y ago

Unfortunately, I think it's ultimately unethical to support the normalization of closed-source text-editing software, because it sets a bad precedent for the level of trust a user should have in their computing environment. For this reason, I much prefer Logseq. https://logseq.com/ https://logseq.com/

Grimblewald 2y ago

I compared many options and after being messed around by my last provider which used a closed format making leaving hard, having my entire vault as a folder of files that remain in an open and broadly used format? A dream come true. It ranks among the top products I pay for in terms of absolute satiafaction as well as value add per dollar spent. The community plugins are fantastic, the core plugins are incredibly useful, the whole thing is sleek amd well designed. I cannot express how much I love this produt and the community that has built up around it.