A bit of exciting news. I'm joining Obsidian full-time as CEO! ✨
I have been using Obsidian and developing for it since Erica Xu and Shida Li first launched in 2020. I can't overstate how life-changing Obsidian has been for me. It has fundamentally improved the way I think. I want to see what happens if more people gain that superpower.
I've spent about 20 years building things online, and learned a lot along the way. Obsidian is built on strong values. My goal is to create the structure that helps us uphold those values for as long as possible.
Obsidian is
- Free for personal use
- Built on durable, open file formats without lock-in
- Private, offline-first, and E2E encrypted
- Endlessly customizable via API/plugins
Above all, Obsidian is 100% user-supported. There are no investors pushing us to compromise on these values.
I believe these strong values are why Obsidian has such a kind and dedicated community. It's genuinely one of the most generous and friendly places online.
If it is user supported, why is it closed-source?
@post those two things are not mutually exclusive — for example Logseq is open source but is not 100% user supported (they have raised a lot of money from VC investors)
you can read more about the reasoning here
https://forum.obsidian.md/t/open-sourcing-of-obsidian/1515/11
https://forum.obsidian.md/t/open-sourcing-of-obsidian/1515/38
Sorry but you are making a lot of assumptions. Can we stick strictly to my question?
I'm not asking why Obsidian is not developed in the open, accepting contributions etc etc (addressed in your link).
I'm asking why you don't publish Obsidian source code with a FOSS license attached. Even a zip file for every release would qualify it as FOSS, what matters is the license.
@post Did you take a look at the forum threads I shared? The answer to your question is there.
Yes, this is why I wrote:
> I’m not asking why Obsidian is not developed in the open, accepting contributions etc etc (addressed in your link).
The rest is rhetoric and clichés.
Do you know the difference between a permissive FOSS license and a Copyleft one to actually address my question?
In the threads you linked, someone asked about GPL and someone else specified that Free Software doesn't mean gratis. And the term Copyleft is never mentioned.
But no one from Obsidian team addressed it, as I said, they replied to something else.
Obsidian simply isn’t the right choice for anyone who won’t use closed-source software, just as Logseq isn’t the right choice for anyone who won’t use software developed by an organization beholden to venture capitalist investors.
Fortunately, we all have enough functionally excellent choices in PKM software that no one has to compromise their principles to find something that works for them.
@EpiphanicSynchronicity @kepano
> developed by an organization beholden to venture capitalist investors
Please stop this FUD.
First of all, it's *venture capitals* that can mean a lot of things, including patron a project because they believe in the idea and it seems so reading the names:
"We're proud to announce our first $4.1M seed round. The financing was led by Patrick Collison, Stripe CEO, Nat Friedman, former CEO of GitHub, Tobias Lütke, Founder of Shopify, Sriram Krishnan, GP at A16Z, along with Craft Ventures, Matrix Partners China, Day One Ventures, Charlie Cheever, Founder of Expo/Quora, and Dave Winer, the forefather of outliners, scripting, weblogs, RSS, podcasting, etc. The round also included participation from Logseq contributors and community members. The funding will be used to hire top talent and double down on product development." ( https://blog.logseq.com/logseq-raises-4-1m-to-accelerate-growth-of-the-new-world-knowledge-graph/ )
Logseq funding model is via Open Collective and providing Sync feature and eventually online publishing.
Logseq is released with a AGPL license, so the project de facto is free for everyone to improve independently from the company with the only requirement to release changes as AGPL.
A license is a document that has legal value and certifies Logseq's commitment to the stated principles.
Your inferences on VC are just FUD and you raised concerns just because you have not better arguments in favor of Obsidian's approach.
Claims like "Obsidian cares about its users" is just like Apple claiming to care about users privacy or Google motto "don't be evil": it is not based on facts.
If Obsidian were released as GPL for example, the team could be sure no one can take advantage of it to launch a proprietary competitor. Instead, if someone makes actual improvements to a fork, the original team can merge back the changes they like.
Without a FOSS license there is no way users can decide to move to a fork that better meet their needs. The Obsidian team will always be able to dictate decisions because users are locked into the ecosystem (standard formats makes sense with FOSS, otherwise not). They just need to keep a good percentage of its userbase happy enough not to consider a migration to something else.
I have asked specifically why not adopting a Copyleft license to make Obsidian FOSS (as opposed to a permissive license that corporations want us to believe is the only possible FOSS) and he didn't reply nor no one did on Obsidian forum when someone else mentioned GPL specifically.
@post @EpiphanicSynchronicity I guess I don’t understand why you are so upset about this if there are other options on the market that fit better fit with your priorities? It’s okay to not use Obsidian if you don’t want to 😊
I am not upset*, I'm just asking out of curiosity: why does a proprietary license fits Obsidian team needs more than a Copyleft license?
* I am upset if you spread FUD about Logseq.
@post The answer to your question is in the forum thread I shared. Copyleft does not address the points Silver and Licat raised.
I believe there is room for many tools in this market so I am excited that there options available that fit different priorities — especially ones that bias towards interoperability! We need that diversity, at the end of the day it’s all plain text ☺️
> Copyleft does not address the points Silver and Licat raised.
How? They didn't discuss licenses at all, they only discussed development in the open, accepting contributions etc but my question is not about this.
Do you understand that you can share the source code as GPL in a zip file and keep going with the development as always? If someone invests resources to improve a fork, that will still be GPL and you will be able to merge back changes you like, and your users will be free to pick the fork that meet their needs (if you are so committed to your users this shouldn't be a concern).
And the point here is that for a while now I pointed out **a fact** to Obsidian users: Obsidian is closed source while Logseq is FOSS. This has practical consequences.
They (you included) replied by saying Logseq decisions are affected by VC while Logseq can sustain this exactly because it's FOSS: if it wasn't, like Obsidian, then VC would be a concern, yes.
So if you intend to respect others now, stop replying to facts with FUD especially now that you are Obsidian CEO, OK?
Thank you.
@post What I said is that open source and user-supported are not mutually exclusive — that's not FUD.
Over the years I have tried running businesses under every kind of funding model, and not having VCs is a better fit for Obsidian's priorities, that's all 😊
I understand that you don't like the answer about why Obsidian is not open source... I don't have a better one for you at the moment. It's okay if people prefer to use an open source option and I am glad there are several to choose from!
But are you familiar with Copyleft, Free Software, GPL and so on? Were those business related to these or only proprietary and permissive licenses?
@post Yes, of course I am familiar! I have created and participated in many open source projects, see my GitHub profile and my previous company Lumi where we open sourced lots of libraries.
The fact that you are replying with "open source" makes me belive even more that you don't understand the difference between Free Software/Copyleft and the rebrand by corporations named Open Source™/their permissive licenses.
Am I right?
@post most of my projects are MIT licensed, see https://github.com/kepano
So no? You don't know the difference?
The issue has been raised on a forum thread you linked and no one from Obsidian team addressed it nor did so elsewhere to my knowledge.
So I guess now you will re-read our conversation and do some research on how Copyleft can protect a software project and eventually provide a proper reply to those users?
@post I am saying it's an intentional choice. I made the choice in my personal projects to make them permissive. That doesn't mean I don't understand the difference between licenses.
It's important to compartmentalize questions around funding, feedback, extensibility, modification, distribution, etc. There are tradeoffs to any approach.
The forum post I linked to provides answers to your question, but I understand you still disagree, and that's okay.
It provides the answer without using terms like "GPL" and "Copyleft"... OK I guess they used synonyms that I am not aware of or some figure of speech, or maybe you are back with the argument that for you FOSS = development in the open = GitHub etc.
I give up, cheers.
