6 ms·

I think the increasingly widespread attitude that only open source software is good and trustworthy increasingly annoying and problematic. Building software ta

I think the increasingly widespread attitude that only open source software is good and trustworthy increasingly annoying and problematic. Building software takes time and resources. Experienced show that most open source projects do not make enough money to make the resource investment worthwhile, much less the time investment. I generally like people being able to out food on the table, and if that means I have to pay for their software to use it or get updates, then I am happy to do so if that software is of value for me. That of course doesn‘t mean I appreciate unnecessary vendor lock in, hostile subscription models, etc. All of these things are common with proprietary software, but they are not inherent to it. Obsidian is a great example. Easy to takeout open formats, generous licensing model and no aggressive licensing implementation that makes it impossible to use the software offline. The team behind it seems to be able to make a living and people can still feel safe about the access to their notes. Even if its not open source, it would be great progress if we‘ve had more software like obsidian

phoronixrly 1y ago
Closed-source software is unethical regardless of any of your unsubstantiated claims on its or open-source software's security.
- iamsaitam 1y ago
  Why do you think it's unethical?
  - phoronixrly 1y ago
    I will assume you're not trolling but that just don't know what FOSS is about. Check this out https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
    - sanswork 1y ago
      You don't have to be ignorant of FOSS to disagree with the statement that closed source software is unethical.
    - general1465 1y ago
      If you don't know recipe for food, it is automatically unethical food?
      - ruszki 1y ago
        Not disclosing the ingredients is illegal large part of the world, and people can die if you don’t do that, so the answer is clearly yes in some sense. This is also true for some cooking techniques, like heat treatment of raw meat. I think your analogy is not the best.
        general1465 1y ago
        Not disclosing ingredients is more like not disclosing dependencies because I am very confident that you can't go into a shop, buy a random food and then construct recipe from list of ingredients.
        ruszki 1y ago
        There are parts of the code which don't use dependencies, because you wrote it. Which part of any food is not created from ingredients?
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - coldtea 1y ago
        If the recipe is hidden, yes. It's probably illegal too, as in many jurisdiction the public, or at least a health/food regulatory body should know the process and ingredients. Take into account allergens, and on top of a matter of public knowledge and health, it can also be a matter of life and death.
        theshrike79 1y ago
        List of ingredients does not a recipe make. It's like saying "Linux uses C" and now you instantly can copy Linux =)
    - perching_aix 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - sampullman 1y ago
        You don't have to agree with it, but I think it's fair to parrot a take from people who have invested a lot of time and effort into considering why free software is good. The linked page has a clear explanation for why one might consider nonfree software to be unethical.
      - exe34 1y ago
        Sometimes people take the time to read and understand something and conclude that this is the best way to express it, better than they themselves can paraphrase.
        perching_aix 1y ago
        And sometimes they just collect opinions and follow suit, instead of forming their own ones. How do you know which one happened here, are you a mind reader?
        coldtea 1y ago
        Do you have any opinions of your own instead of berating people with meta arguments and rudeness?
        perching_aix 1y ago
        Yes.
        exe34 1y ago
        If you cared to find out, you could try asking questions about the views, instead of poisoning the well.
        perching_aix 1y ago
    - Aefiam 1y ago
      this page gives no arguments why nonfree software is unethical
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
        This is the first paragraph after the initial quote defining "free software". > We campaign for these freedoms because everyone deserves them. With these freedoms, the users (both individually and collectively) control the program and what it does for them. When users don't control the program, we call it a “nonfree” or “proprietary” program. The nonfree program controls the users, and the developer controls the program; this makes the program an instrument of unjust power. It seems safe to say the author thinks that one creating "an instrument of unjust power" for oneself is unethical. Though, perhaps if the commenter in question pulled that quote out of the article, it could have helped their point.
    - freedomben 1y ago
      As someone who also believes closed source software is unethical (though full of nuance), I don't appreciate the abrasive and combative (and frankly rude) way you are engaging on this. You're so epitomizing the rabid stereotype that part of me thinks you are just trolling and don't actually believe what you are saying. If you actually care about this, stop alienating potential allies, and ideally start making arguments to support your case instead of telling people to RTFM (which in this case is even worse because "the manual" isn't as much of an authoritative mic drop as you seem to think it is).
  - tuyiown 1y ago
    Depends on people, but for most it's mainly because Stallman says so. You still have ethics ground if you think it the same way as repairability, actively blocking ways to repairs things you bought yourself is questionable, and keeping things closed source can be seen as a way to artificially prolonge a strict dependance on your vendor by impairing your ability to resolve issues by yourself.
    - coldtea 1y ago
      >Depends on people, but for most it's mainly because Stallman says so No, for most it's because they evaluated a number of ethical, social, and technical concerns, and think so.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  I am quite thankfull that thanks to unethical software I am able to pay my bills, instead of being like a street art performer hoping to get enough coins at the end of the day. I was also a dreamer once upon a time, with M$ on my email signature and all that zealot attitude, then I had to support myself and face the reality that most supermarkets don't take pull requests.
  - exe34 1y ago
    Many open source projects are written by people who are paid to do so. Just because you couldn't do it doesn't mean it's not possible.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      From companies whose main business is selling unethical software. Naturally I am not counting those, given that they are paid in tainted money as per OP's complaint.
      - exe34 1y ago
        I don't think GPL cares where the money is coming from - we're talking about closed/open source, not ethical business models. If we did, we'd have to also go over unfettered free markets and capital flow.
        pjmlp 1y ago
        FOSS and GPL aren't exactly the same thing. We are surely talking about ethics, > Closed-source software is unethical regardless of any of your unsubstantiated claims on its or open-source software's security. And in that regard, there is also something to talk about regarding some prominent figures in open-source world.
        phoronixrly 1y ago
        Oh, DHH? Not sure how his xenophobic ramblings have anything to do with this...
- slightwinder 1y ago
  I hope you understand that ethic is not absolute. It's unethical for you, according to your ethical rules. Doesn't mean that this applies to other people rules too.
  - phoronixrly 1y ago
    Yeah, we're on a site where a large majority of users shamelessly work at adtech companies, and threads regularly pop-up where people defend working at companies actively developing and selling exploits. I am well aware of that, this is why I remind people that proprietary software is bad actually.
    - slightwinder 1y ago
      You wrote that "Closed-source software" is unethical, not "harmful software & services" is unethical. There is a significant difference. Don't shift your goal as you like. Not all closed-source software is harmful; Obsidian here is a prime example of one which is not harmful and could be even considered as beneficial, despite being closed source, because of how open and supportive it's designed in everything else.
      - phoronixrly 1y ago
        > Don't shift your goal as you like. I was just confirming the point you made -- the definition of ethical is not absolute, and there are people that consider questionable things ethical. > Obsidian here is a prime example of one which is not harmful and could be even considered as beneficial, despite being closed source All proprietary software is unethical. It's as simple as that. No matter whether it's free or paid, no matter whether it's useful or harmful. If you have a right to use it but are deprived of the right to alter it, it is not ethical.
- linhns 1y ago
  Try to get by with just open source software, I guarantee you won’t.
  - phoronixrly 1y ago
    First of all, I do get by with just FOSS. Second -- whether you can or cannot get by without proprietary software has no relation to it being objectively unethical.
N-Krause 1y ago
While I agree with you, i feel like that was not the point the author was making. It more so was a warning that the combination of little reviewed community plugins and a not sandboxed macos binary is a potential risk. And with that sentiment I can also agree.
- kcplate 1y ago
  That was my take too. I am less concerned with an app being simply closed source and much more concerned with closed source coupled with skipping review and the general approved distribution models on the two platforms.
jamesbelchamber 1y ago
> I think the increasingly widespread attitude that only open source software is good and trustworthy increasingly annoying and problematic. Software being open source almost always makes it more trustworthy, and I'm glad that more people are picking up on this over time. > I generally like people being able to out food on the table Completely agreed, and this makes for a frustrating paradox. I don't use Obsidian because it's closed source, but I don't think it's evil or anything. Conversely, I pay for Immich, and I hope their model is sustainable.
- perching_aix 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - oniony 1y ago
    They get to counter a point they think is wrong in an open forum on the internet. I guess they get the satisfaction of providing a second viewpoint to a claim, so that the claim, alone, is not the only viewpoint that others coming to this thread see. What did you get out of calling out their counterclaim?
    - perching_aix 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - exe34 1y ago
        so why did it take you so long to be open about your own motives? still, it's good that you did admit to it in the end.
        perching_aix 1y ago
        [flagged]
      - coldtea 1y ago
geistlos 1y ago
I think they could easily make Obsidian open source without losing out on profits. The app itself is free anyway. They could keep the sync backend closed source and make people pay to use the sync feature. Lots of apps have open-source clients (for trust/auditability) but backends that are closed/locked somehow, e.g., Logseq.
- pcthrowaway 1y ago
  Does anyone know if it's possible to have a core which is unsandboxed, but load plugins which are sandboxed? This seems like a great solution if so.
  - DanielHB 1y ago
    This is one of the main use cases for Webassembly outside of the browser. I think we will soon see the ability to write plugins that can even run server-side of SaaS solutions.
- slightwinder 1y ago
  Obsidian is using electron, so the source is already somewhat available anyway. I understand them not making it open source, and risking someone forking it and harming their business. But considering the situation, I would think making it at least source available on a popular forge, where people can make issues and open merge-requests, might be a beneficial thing. There are a bunch of small problems people encounter here and there, which usually will never be solved by the company. Giving the community a route to improve their tool, would be good.
- danielspace23 1y ago
  The PKM I've been using lately, SiYuan, does exactly that, and I think their business model isn't bad: the client is fully FOSS, there are some client-side paid features with a one-time subscription (WebDAV/S3 sync "bring your own server") and some server-side paid features with a more expensive recurring subscription (cloud space provided by them). I don't particularly like client-side paid features, but: - The client is fully FOSS, you can just patch the license check out. In fact, there are some forks on GitHub that do just that and provide binaries, and the authors don't seem to care, they even acknowledged them on Twitter (https://x.com/b3logos/status/1928366043094724937 https://x.com/b3logos/status/1928366043094724937). - There are plugins to sync without a paid plan This works out quite well for them: if you choose a fork or a sync plugin, you don't get the same support that paying users do, so many users still end up buying a license. But you don't need to, which makes the whole thing not user-hostile. I have bought a one-time license myself, and I'm very happy that I'm supporting the development of a FOSS project.
tetha 1y ago
Obsidian also has affordable commercial pricing. By now I very much try to pay support contracts or give back to projects in other ways at work. The problem is that quite a few open core companies immediately go from $0 / year to low to medium 6-digit-figures per year. This escalates the entire project sky-high in levels of internal scrutiny with a high chance of it not happening. On the other hand, it was simple to argue why this is easily providing us with $50 in value per year. Now it is integrated with our normal license handling and it's actually slowly and steadily growing internally. We're up another 4-5 users from the last time I looked.
- kepano 1y ago
  In case you missed it, Obsidian is now free for work. The commercial license is an optional donation, similar to the Catalyst license. https://obsidian.md/blog/free-for-work/ https://obsidian.md/blog/free-for-work/
  - tetha 1y ago
    Yes. I have mentioned this internally, but my boss has agreed to keep it.
  - chews 1y ago
    always nice to see the CEO doing evangelism work. Keep it up my man :-)
wosined 1y ago
It does not have to make money for people to do it as a hobby. Not everything people do is because of money.
coldtea 1y ago
>I think the increasingly widespread attitude that only open source software is good and trustworthy increasingly annoying and problematic. If people put their notes in, only open source software is good. At best, one can tolerate a very big closed source company, who is unlikely to just do whatever with the data and has some track record for privacy, like Apple. But trusting all your notes to a closed source app from a small peanuts company?
- theshrike79 1y ago
  In this case the "closed source app" is using a very open and easy to parse format. If Obsidian enshittified tonight so badly I had to stop using it, the only thing I'd kind of miss is dataview and bases. And of those dataview is "just" parsing a bunch of markdown with javascript. Bases is a yaml format for displaying more markdown. I'm pretty sure I could vibe-code some scripts over a weekend that cover most of my Obsidian use-cases and use any markdown-capable editor for writing. That's why I use Obsidian (and stopped using Joplin, because - at the time - all my notes were in one obscure blob)
  - cpach 1y ago
    Same here. I have not found any open source option that does all of these: Nice user interface / App for both Mac and iOS / Automatic syncing.
- ezst 1y ago
  > has some track record for privacy, like Apple. Should we tell them?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
rightbyte 1y ago
> I generally like people being able to out food on the table, and if that means I have to pay for their software to use it or get updates, then I am happy to do so if that software is of value for me. Paying money to Obsidian for writing yet another text editor seems like digging and filling holes to increase GDP to me.
- Semaphor 1y ago
  Phew, good thing it’s not a text editor.
  - rightbyte 1y ago
    Looks like one to me. A WYSIWYG text editor with hyper links. Like Emacs.
- yencabulator 1y ago
  Obsidian is a layer on top of https://codemirror.net/ https://codemirror.net/ -- they didn't write a text editor, really.
slightwinder 1y ago
The article is about security and trust. Open Source is in that context by definition the only good solution. Though, doesn't mean that a closed app has to be bad, but you have to blindly trust them, and hope that this will never change. With Open Source, you don't have to be blind, you can trust them educated (or at least trust that other will check what's going on). Of course this always a bit of case by case, but obsidian is a very exposed and worthful target.

phoronixrly 1y ago

Closed-source software is unethical regardless of any of your unsubstantiated claims on its or open-source software's security.

iamsaitam 1y ago
Why do you think it's unethical?
- phoronixrly 1y ago
  I will assume you're not trolling but that just don't know what FOSS is about. Check this out https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
  - sanswork 1y ago
    You don't have to be ignorant of FOSS to disagree with the statement that closed source software is unethical.
  - general1465 1y ago
    If you don't know recipe for food, it is automatically unethical food?
    - ruszki 1y ago
      Not disclosing the ingredients is illegal large part of the world, and people can die if you don’t do that, so the answer is clearly yes in some sense. This is also true for some cooking techniques, like heat treatment of raw meat. I think your analogy is not the best.
      - general1465 1y ago
        Not disclosing ingredients is more like not disclosing dependencies because I am very confident that you can't go into a shop, buy a random food and then construct recipe from list of ingredients.
        ruszki 1y ago
        There are parts of the code which don't use dependencies, because you wrote it. Which part of any food is not created from ingredients?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - coldtea 1y ago
      If the recipe is hidden, yes. It's probably illegal too, as in many jurisdiction the public, or at least a health/food regulatory body should know the process and ingredients. Take into account allergens, and on top of a matter of public knowledge and health, it can also be a matter of life and death.
      - theshrike79 1y ago
        List of ingredients does not a recipe make. It's like saying "Linux uses C" and now you instantly can copy Linux =)
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - sampullman 1y ago
      You don't have to agree with it, but I think it's fair to parrot a take from people who have invested a lot of time and effort into considering why free software is good. The linked page has a clear explanation for why one might consider nonfree software to be unethical.
    - exe34 1y ago
      Sometimes people take the time to read and understand something and conclude that this is the best way to express it, better than they themselves can paraphrase.
      - perching_aix 1y ago
        And sometimes they just collect opinions and follow suit, instead of forming their own ones. How do you know which one happened here, are you a mind reader?
        coldtea 1y ago
        Do you have any opinions of your own instead of berating people with meta arguments and rudeness?
        perching_aix 1y ago
        Yes.
        exe34 1y ago
        If you cared to find out, you could try asking questions about the views, instead of poisoning the well.
        perching_aix 1y ago
  - Aefiam 1y ago
    this page gives no arguments why nonfree software is unethical
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
      This is the first paragraph after the initial quote defining "free software". > We campaign for these freedoms because everyone deserves them. With these freedoms, the users (both individually and collectively) control the program and what it does for them. When users don't control the program, we call it a “nonfree” or “proprietary” program. The nonfree program controls the users, and the developer controls the program; this makes the program an instrument of unjust power. It seems safe to say the author thinks that one creating "an instrument of unjust power" for oneself is unethical. Though, perhaps if the commenter in question pulled that quote out of the article, it could have helped their point.
  - freedomben 1y ago
    As someone who also believes closed source software is unethical (though full of nuance), I don't appreciate the abrasive and combative (and frankly rude) way you are engaging on this. You're so epitomizing the rabid stereotype that part of me thinks you are just trolling and don't actually believe what you are saying. If you actually care about this, stop alienating potential allies, and ideally start making arguments to support your case instead of telling people to RTFM (which in this case is even worse because "the manual" isn't as much of an authoritative mic drop as you seem to think it is).
- tuyiown 1y ago
  Depends on people, but for most it's mainly because Stallman says so. You still have ethics ground if you think it the same way as repairability, actively blocking ways to repairs things you bought yourself is questionable, and keeping things closed source can be seen as a way to artificially prolonge a strict dependance on your vendor by impairing your ability to resolve issues by yourself.
  - coldtea 1y ago
    >Depends on people, but for most it's mainly because Stallman says so No, for most it's because they evaluated a number of ethical, social, and technical concerns, and think so.
pjmlp 1y ago
I am quite thankfull that thanks to unethical software I am able to pay my bills, instead of being like a street art performer hoping to get enough coins at the end of the day. I was also a dreamer once upon a time, with M$ on my email signature and all that zealot attitude, then I had to support myself and face the reality that most supermarkets don't take pull requests.
- exe34 1y ago
  Many open source projects are written by people who are paid to do so. Just because you couldn't do it doesn't mean it's not possible.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    From companies whose main business is selling unethical software. Naturally I am not counting those, given that they are paid in tainted money as per OP's complaint.
    - exe34 1y ago
      I don't think GPL cares where the money is coming from - we're talking about closed/open source, not ethical business models. If we did, we'd have to also go over unfettered free markets and capital flow.
      - pjmlp 1y ago
        FOSS and GPL aren't exactly the same thing. We are surely talking about ethics, > Closed-source software is unethical regardless of any of your unsubstantiated claims on its or open-source software's security. And in that regard, there is also something to talk about regarding some prominent figures in open-source world.
        phoronixrly 1y ago
        Oh, DHH? Not sure how his xenophobic ramblings have anything to do with this...
slightwinder 1y ago
I hope you understand that ethic is not absolute. It's unethical for you, according to your ethical rules. Doesn't mean that this applies to other people rules too.
- phoronixrly 1y ago
  Yeah, we're on a site where a large majority of users shamelessly work at adtech companies, and threads regularly pop-up where people defend working at companies actively developing and selling exploits. I am well aware of that, this is why I remind people that proprietary software is bad actually.
  - slightwinder 1y ago
    You wrote that "Closed-source software" is unethical, not "harmful software & services" is unethical. There is a significant difference. Don't shift your goal as you like. Not all closed-source software is harmful; Obsidian here is a prime example of one which is not harmful and could be even considered as beneficial, despite being closed source, because of how open and supportive it's designed in everything else.
    - phoronixrly 1y ago
      > Don't shift your goal as you like. I was just confirming the point you made -- the definition of ethical is not absolute, and there are people that consider questionable things ethical. > Obsidian here is a prime example of one which is not harmful and could be even considered as beneficial, despite being closed source All proprietary software is unethical. It's as simple as that. No matter whether it's free or paid, no matter whether it's useful or harmful. If you have a right to use it but are deprived of the right to alter it, it is not ethical.
linhns 1y ago
Try to get by with just open source software, I guarantee you won’t.
- phoronixrly 1y ago
  First of all, I do get by with just FOSS. Second -- whether you can or cannot get by without proprietary software has no relation to it being objectively unethical.

N-Krause 1y ago

While I agree with you, i feel like that was not the point the author was making. It more so was a warning that the combination of little reviewed community plugins and a not sandboxed macos binary is a potential risk. And with that sentiment I can also agree.

kcplate 1y ago
That was my take too. I am less concerned with an app being simply closed source and much more concerned with closed source coupled with skipping review and the general approved distribution models on the two platforms.

jamesbelchamber 1y ago

> I think the increasingly widespread attitude that only open source software is good and trustworthy increasingly annoying and problematic. Software being open source almost always makes it more trustworthy, and I'm glad that more people are picking up on this over time. > I generally like people being able to out food on the table Completely agreed, and this makes for a frustrating paradox. I don't use Obsidian because it's closed source, but I don't think it's evil or anything. Conversely, I pay for Immich, and I hope their model is sustainable.

perching_aix 1y ago
[flagged]
- oniony 1y ago
  They get to counter a point they think is wrong in an open forum on the internet. I guess they get the satisfaction of providing a second viewpoint to a claim, so that the claim, alone, is not the only viewpoint that others coming to this thread see. What did you get out of calling out their counterclaim?
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - exe34 1y ago
      so why did it take you so long to be open about your own motives? still, it's good that you did admit to it in the end.
      - perching_aix 1y ago
        [flagged]
    - coldtea 1y ago

geistlos 1y ago

I think they could easily make Obsidian open source without losing out on profits. The app itself is free anyway. They could keep the sync backend closed source and make people pay to use the sync feature. Lots of apps have open-source clients (for trust/auditability) but backends that are closed/locked somehow, e.g., Logseq.

pcthrowaway 1y ago
Does anyone know if it's possible to have a core which is unsandboxed, but load plugins which are sandboxed? This seems like a great solution if so.
- DanielHB 1y ago
  This is one of the main use cases for Webassembly outside of the browser. I think we will soon see the ability to write plugins that can even run server-side of SaaS solutions.
slightwinder 1y ago
Obsidian is using electron, so the source is already somewhat available anyway. I understand them not making it open source, and risking someone forking it and harming their business. But considering the situation, I would think making it at least source available on a popular forge, where people can make issues and open merge-requests, might be a beneficial thing. There are a bunch of small problems people encounter here and there, which usually will never be solved by the company. Giving the community a route to improve their tool, would be good.
danielspace23 1y ago
The PKM I've been using lately, SiYuan, does exactly that, and I think their business model isn't bad: the client is fully FOSS, there are some client-side paid features with a one-time subscription (WebDAV/S3 sync "bring your own server") and some server-side paid features with a more expensive recurring subscription (cloud space provided by them). I don't particularly like client-side paid features, but: - The client is fully FOSS, you can just patch the license check out. In fact, there are some forks on GitHub that do just that and provide binaries, and the authors don't seem to care, they even acknowledged them on Twitter (https://x.com/b3logos/status/1928366043094724937 https://x.com/b3logos/status/1928366043094724937). - There are plugins to sync without a paid plan This works out quite well for them: if you choose a fork or a sync plugin, you don't get the same support that paying users do, so many users still end up buying a license. But you don't need to, which makes the whole thing not user-hostile. I have bought a one-time license myself, and I'm very happy that I'm supporting the development of a FOSS project.

tetha 1y ago

Obsidian also has affordable commercial pricing. By now I very much try to pay support contracts or give back to projects in other ways at work. The problem is that quite a few open core companies immediately go from $0 / year to low to medium 6-digit-figures per year. This escalates the entire project sky-high in levels of internal scrutiny with a high chance of it not happening. On the other hand, it was simple to argue why this is easily providing us with $50 in value per year. Now it is integrated with our normal license handling and it's actually slowly and steadily growing internally. We're up another 4-5 users from the last time I looked.

kepano 1y ago
In case you missed it, Obsidian is now free for work. The commercial license is an optional donation, similar to the Catalyst license. https://obsidian.md/blog/free-for-work/ https://obsidian.md/blog/free-for-work/
- tetha 1y ago
  Yes. I have mentioned this internally, but my boss has agreed to keep it.
- chews 1y ago
  always nice to see the CEO doing evangelism work. Keep it up my man :-)

wosined 1y ago

It does not have to make money for people to do it as a hobby. Not everything people do is because of money.

coldtea 1y ago

>I think the increasingly widespread attitude that only open source software is good and trustworthy increasingly annoying and problematic. If people put their notes in, only open source software is good. At best, one can tolerate a very big closed source company, who is unlikely to just do whatever with the data and has some track record for privacy, like Apple. But trusting all your notes to a closed source app from a small peanuts company?

theshrike79 1y ago
In this case the "closed source app" is using a very open and easy to parse format. If Obsidian enshittified tonight so badly I had to stop using it, the only thing I'd kind of miss is dataview and bases. And of those dataview is "just" parsing a bunch of markdown with javascript. Bases is a yaml format for displaying more markdown. I'm pretty sure I could vibe-code some scripts over a weekend that cover most of my Obsidian use-cases and use any markdown-capable editor for writing. That's why I use Obsidian (and stopped using Joplin, because - at the time - all my notes were in one obscure blob)
- cpach 1y ago
  Same here. I have not found any open source option that does all of these: Nice user interface / App for both Mac and iOS / Automatic syncing.
ezst 1y ago
> has some track record for privacy, like Apple. Should we tell them?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

rightbyte 1y ago

> I generally like people being able to out food on the table, and if that means I have to pay for their software to use it or get updates, then I am happy to do so if that software is of value for me. Paying money to Obsidian for writing yet another text editor seems like digging and filling holes to increase GDP to me.

Semaphor 1y ago
Phew, good thing it’s not a text editor.
- rightbyte 1y ago
  Looks like one to me. A WYSIWYG text editor with hyper links. Like Emacs.
yencabulator 1y ago
Obsidian is a layer on top of https://codemirror.net/ https://codemirror.net/ -- they didn't write a text editor, really.

slightwinder 1y ago

The article is about security and trust. Open Source is in that context by definition the only good solution. Though, doesn't mean that a closed app has to be bad, but you have to blindly trust them, and hope that this will never change. With Open Source, you don't have to be blind, you can trust them educated (or at least trust that other will check what's going on). Of course this always a bit of case by case, but obsidian is a very exposed and worthful target.