On: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on...

[_nckn]

Nothing is forever.

Especially if it is not free.

Especially if it is not open source.

If personal use is free forever but not open source, how am I supposed to believe that it will be free forever?

Color me skeptical.

[goodsignal → _nckn]

Healthy skepticism is great! But every post of yours is perfectly fitting the troll recipe. But just in case you're being genuine, here's my take.

The software is already nice and very usable, even at this early beta stage. There's going to be a million users within a couple years. One thing I've noticed about the PKM community, is that there are a lot of really smart and ambitious people here. You know what that means? Community capital. Guarantee or not, if Obsidian ceases to exist, you possess your data in an open format structure in an open standard, and the latest software you had downloaded will work until a handful of those million users create an open source equivalent.

There's nothing proprietary about backlinking. It's not rocket science. Obsidian is just leading the way with a very enjoyable UX for it.

And I hope they succeed. It seems like they are genuinely seeking a nice balance between creating value for themselves and the community.

[_nckn → goodsignal]

I don't know what is it about every of my post that fits troll personality. Maybe because my first language is not English?

As for the rest of your post, fair point.

[ymolodtsov → _nckn]

Because individual users don't give a lot of revenue to any SaaS company. That's why Notion just made their personal tier free.

It's a top of the funnel to convert people at workspaces into using the tool because they're familiar with it (not talking about Obsidian specifically, but in general).

[_nckn → ymolodtsov]

Why not have a somewhat open core model? The user is free to use the open source app in their local machine, but then there is a license that says you definitely can't host this on your own and charge for it.

Meanwhile for the commercial customers they can offer a managed solution.

[bachmeier → _nckn]

All your data is in text format. It's a desktop app, so you don't really lose it, but if for some reason it disappears and your installed app stops working, all your data is already in a directory on your computer.

[_nckn → bachmeier]

I mean, the data is the least I'm concerned about. It is the app itself and the way it works that it tightly integrated to my workflow.

In the case it shuts down, there's now way I'll spend my time redoing my workflow or grep stuffs over all now already scattered digital documents.

[ancientworldnow → _nckn]

It's a desktop app. If Obsidian shuts down the app will continue to work as long as your OS can run electron apps. If it doesn't work, they're just markdown files a million other apps can handle.

[ericax → _nckn]

I'm also a skeptic. Although nothing is forever, we want to get closer to forever than all the other note-taking apps.

We'll likely make a formal guarantee to open source in the case of us shutting down. Didn't realize that was a possibility until today.

[_nckn → ericax]

How would you guarantee that your guarantee is guaranteed? (not a troll question even though the wording seems to imply so)

[ericax → _nckn]

Need to consult a lawyer on that, maybe it needs to be notarized somehow?

There have been some attempts to do this (by other apps), we can look into their approach as well.

And yeah no offense taken, don't worry about it :)

[_nckn → ericax]

I see, I'm not familiar with that as well that's why I'm asking.