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It’s interesting that a closed-source app has good reputation among FOSS enthusiasts. Surely they are not a Microsoft or Apple, but still who controls your computer, you or them?
It stores your data in plaintext, and simply uses the program to parse special formatting characters. There are no attempts at obfuscation or encryption, and it doesn’t lock you into a walled garden that refuses to play nice with other programs. The program itself is closed-source, but anyone could write an open source version to parse the same info… There just hasn’t been a good reason to do so. Even if Obsidian as a company and program ceases to exist overnight, your data is still safe on your machine and can be read by anyone who cares enough to dig into the file. Hell, you can even open it as the plaintext file and dig through it manually.
There in fact are FOSS alternatives like Joplin. Personally, I actually switched from Joplin to Obsidian due to a larger community (and therefore community-driven plugins) and overall a more polished UX. That being said, I have the security of switching back if Obsidian ever becomes evil or unusable.
Another aspect is that the entire source code is technically viewable (partially obfuscated) since it’s a web app. Having written plugins for Obsidian, you’re very much interacting with the source code itself. Feels like open source with extra steps and I wish one day they will finally make the switch to true FOSS.
I just cant wrap my head around why they’re willing to go so far to gain good will from people by having such a generous free tier, but somehow licensing the code under a FOSS license is out of the question??
Why not just go all the way and make sure everyone who cares about reading the souce could also give you free contributions?
It’s interesting that a closed-source app has good reputation among FOSS enthusiasts. Surely they are not a Microsoft or Apple, but still who controls your computer, you or them?
It stores your data in plaintext, and simply uses the program to parse special formatting characters. There are no attempts at obfuscation or encryption, and it doesn’t lock you into a walled garden that refuses to play nice with other programs. The program itself is closed-source, but anyone could write an open source version to parse the same info… There just hasn’t been a good reason to do so. Even if Obsidian as a company and program ceases to exist overnight, your data is still safe on your machine and can be read by anyone who cares enough to dig into the file. Hell, you can even open it as the plaintext file and dig through it manually.
There in fact are FOSS alternatives like Joplin. Personally, I actually switched from Joplin to Obsidian due to a larger community (and therefore community-driven plugins) and overall a more polished UX. That being said, I have the security of switching back if Obsidian ever becomes evil or unusable.
Another aspect is that the entire source code is technically viewable (partially obfuscated) since it’s a web app. Having written plugins for Obsidian, you’re very much interacting with the source code itself. Feels like open source with extra steps and I wish one day they will finally make the switch to true FOSS.
That’s not so true of the Android app. I do have access to bytecode but changing bytecode to bring feature enhancements is not for the faint of heart.
And storage in their current android app is a major privacy breach.
You’re right, I wasn’t thinking about the android app when writing this.
I switched from Joplin because Obisidian data is just markdown and I can edit and generate it with external apps
Joplin had a custom database system (at the time)
I just cant wrap my head around why they’re willing to go so far to gain good will from people by having such a generous free tier, but somehow licensing the code under a FOSS license is out of the question??
Why not just go all the way and make sure everyone who cares about reading the souce could also give you free contributions?
I’ve been really enjoying trilium as an open source alternative but fair warning it’s not as polished as Obsidian