Why is it every time something like Notion is mentioned, there is always someone who wants "local, self-hosted, Markdown"? Just build it yourself.
This clearly shows you have no understanding of the product at hand. Notion is so incredibly powerful that Markdown doesn't even scratch the surface here.
I'd prefer a local or self-hosted product because when the innevitable "incredible journey" blog post comes out, I don't want to have to try and migrate everything to a new service. If I've paid for a product, I can at least keep using it as-is when the company goes under.
Many people care about things such as "what is this company doing with the data I store with them?"
And many people don't have the time or skill to "just build it yourself," so when something awesome like this comes along that looks really appealing, you get people asking for self-hosted options.
Friends don't let friends use web apps. Aside from privacy concerns, relying on someone else's server functioning and being forced to use whatever the newest "improved" version are all strikes against em. Who needs another login collected by someone else (so trustworthy) that you fill with credentials that will be stolen in a hack revealed a few years down the line? There's never any real consequences for service providers. It's best not to use new web services for anything important.
You can either log-in with Google account (which you most likely already have) or via 2fa mechanism where they send an expiring login link to your e-mail address.
There are no password and therefore nothing to hack.
Having no password doesn't mean it can't be hacked. Maybe Notion won't end up in a haveibeenpwned email, but that only addresses half of a single one out of three of my objections to web applications.
Exactly... I've started building something using Hugo that does all this. That way you can create a calendar section, and then use front-matter to define the calendar entries in that section. It even creates an ICS for each item and a calendar for the entire section.
Markdown and front-matter does scratch the surface, and I do have an understanding of the product. It just isn't what I'm looking for. I care about my data and having it accessible, even outside of the application. I like organizing my content using directories for sections, and files for pages. I don't want everything saved to the cloud using a database. I want to use local files and front-matter to create content, and Hugo does this... I've started building what I'm looking for already.
Markdown is a fileformat, while Notion is an interface which can utilize this fileformat. I don't see anything in notion which I could not fit in that fileformat and some folder-structure.
The problem is that making a good interface is a though and long task. It's not done with crapping something together which then barfs out some file. That's people just can't build it themself, because it would be months and years to reach a good quality.
The demand for local&selfhosted on the other side is clear: people don't trust the companies. Companies peek into your data, sell them to other, or just disappear one day. With something under your control this will not happen.
You're pointing out that there seems to be this unmet demand for a self-hosted markdown based product. Rather than wonder why people keep asking for that, maybe you should include those features in whatever it is that you are building.
Maybe the demand is from the worst kind of users a business would want, those that would never convert to actual customers but want something for to tinker and install for free...
those that would never convert to actual customers but want something for to tinker and install for free...
There also might be a valid demand from those who would want to use the features of a collaboration suite like this for internal projects but find themselves beholden to internal or even client-demanded security/data retention policies.
Why is it every time something like Notion is mentioned, there is always someone who wants "local, self-hosted, Markdown"? Just build it yourself.
This clearly shows you have no understanding of the product at hand. Notion is so incredibly powerful that Markdown doesn't even scratch the surface here.