Technology

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 think the big difference is that you can use it for free without any account needed, and all your data is stored locally in a format that remains accessible to alternative apps.

So the moment they start doing questionable stuff you are not a hostage to their app. There are alternatives, they are just not as nice as this currently.

Thanks for the rare, rational comment regarding Obsidian. Many people here seem to think releasing software as closed source automatically means you have something to hide; seemingly forgetting we live in a capitalist system in which you must constantly sell your services to survive. (I am saying this as someone who adores FOSS and donates to most of my homelab software on a regular basis).

I think a more productive way to look at is: is the closed source dev friendly (or at least non-hostile) to the open source community? In the case of Obsidian, they haven't done anything egregious, and regularly contribute to open source plugins. Furthermore, the notes are stored as markdown files. This gives the user strong resistance against potential enshittification, so even if they did go rogue you can just move to some other text editor lol. Granted, you would miss out on plugins but otherwise that's a good reason to keep your plugin usage light and plan your Obsidian vault accordingly.

If they open source all their code, some tech wizard will implement a self hosted obsidian sync server with the same convenience as theirs in a day, and the company will lose their revenue stream

Obsidian is storing everything as plaintext files. Those convenient selfhosted sync solutions have been out there for years.

I fucking LOVE obsidian, one of my most used pieces of software.

I have two note vaults.

One is my personal "everything" not vault, Anything I might need to write down goes there. No random sticky notes, or half used notebooks for me. Game notes, such as what equipment I'm looking for, or solutions to puzzles I'll forget before I can use the information. More practically useful notes like conversion charts to use imperial measurements in blender and godot. Names of people I need to remember and what their handles are on social media, because most platforms don't help you with that. Everything can be interconnected, so some notes are just indexes of other notes.

More impressive is my lore wiki. There is a book series that I will never write, and these notes document the setting. Characters, events, locations, other authors who have helped over the years. Anything that is a proper noun or is otherwise special to the setting is a link to a note of that name.

Obsidian also has "graph view" which visually organizes notes so that things that are connected are physically closer together. I just wish I could give these notes icons on the graph view so that they'd be more visually distinct.

I use Obsidian as a tool to help my shitty memory.

I want to have one single place where I can go search for a thing I know I saw somewhere but can't remember where or what it was exactly

"Did I watch movie X" -> Obsidian -> Watchlist -> Movies and there it'll be.

Same for tv-series, anime, books, games. Yes there are services that do it like Trakt, Imdb, Letterboxd, TVMaze and god knows how many for games. They all get enshittified eventually requiring you to pay for basic functionality (looking at you trakt...)

I'm building a tool for getting my data out from all those services into Obsidian markdown format, maybe It'll get finished some day :D (IMDB and Goodreads work, but you need to do a manual csv export)

"How did I install that finicky piece of software last time" -> Obsidian, I wrote something down because I knew I couldn't remember it. Then I'll improve the guide + refresh with new data.

Now I have a pretty good step-by step guide on how to set up a computer, no matter the OS, just how I like it - all in Obsidian. Mostly just commands I copy-paste and some manual steps that I can't be arsed to automate.

Same with my daily notes, I just write down what I did maybe with some tags so I can find them when I start wondering when did I visit X or put up the curtains in the bedroom.

I use it to track everything..

Quick notes knowledgebase Follow up (personal and work)

The great thing about Obsidian is how flexible it is. The bad thing about Obsidian is how flexible it is.. 😀

I have seen may people comment, or outright leave, Obsidian because because there was too much to learn.. or too many plugins to explore..

Personally, I only look for plugins if I need something specific. Don't see the point of trying random plugins. Is like spending time finding solutions to a problem you may not have..

Also, I work on tech and many documents are in markdown. Obsidian makes it easier to read those. Specially the collapse / expand functionality is really great for exploring large docs.. as long as the creators properly used sections (basically # for level 1, ## for level 2..and so on)

I use it for note taking at work. I like that I can add code into markdown. But yeah post notes and paste screenshots. Useful when I want to go over my old tech notes when I've fixed stuff. A personal knowledge base. The fact it's markdown I could just upload this to somewhere like GitHub and it retains it's formatting

I use it as a work journal and personal knowledge management (PKM). Each day I open a daily journal note (built from a template with an easy shortcut) that contain rough notes on what I did that day. From that note I link over to project notes for any project I worked on or complex issues, scratch notes, etc. I do split windows, one with a narrow view of the daily note and then a larger panel for content notes (like documenting the project or create a scratch note or searching for a note on a problem I had 2 years ago that I need to remember about). There are many useful plugins but Templater and "Various Complements" are my favorite. Templater allows me to configure a template for any note I want to configure, so I can create a new note then hit a shortcut that will prompt me for a page title and auto fill the note with my template (that includes tags, headings, etc) for a meeting or new project or scratch note. Templater can also organize the note and move it around on my filesystem. Various Complements plugin allows me to build a dictionary of anything I want that will then fill in like an IDE when I'm typing in a note. So I use it for all my coworker names, I type 4 letters of someone's name and it pops up suggestions where I can tab-complete their full name.

It's truly a great program, better for me than all the others I've tried: OneNote, TiddlyWiki, DocuWiki, Dendron, and emacs. I used TiddlyWiki for years and had to bend it to my will in many wonky ways, then Obsidian came around and did 90% what I wanted out of the gate and the 3 or 4 plugins I use did the rest. I've been using it for a few years now.

I use it for pretty much everything. Any random crap i need to jot down go into the daily notes with a tag of some sort, Excalidraw extension for any sort of diagrams or a string board for connecting different notes/pictures together, code snippets, documentation etc.

I dont use their sync, but I have proton drive keeping the directory backed up in case of emergencies, and I have a git repo for when i want to officially keep something tracked.

Weekly.
As a personal knowledgebase and todo list.

It says it's free, but then there's a pricing and plans page?

A lot of alarm bells ringing for me about that app.

I like obsidian specifically because you don't need to rely on some built-in sync tool. The files are right there and in a sane format, you can sync them however you want. I use syncthing for this at home, but the choice is yours