@ellane @EpiphanicSynchronicity
- it's not only the product of a company but also a tool that belongs to all the users.
- if the company give up on Logseq the development can be continued by others even by re-organizing a new team of developers eventually financially supported.
- it can only "die" if there are better alternatives and the users move to them. As soon as it is relevant, it won't die.
- I will always be able to modify it to fix bugs or improve it by myself and even if I have not the skills, I can pay someone to do the work.
- tools to export data from it can benefit from knowing exactly how it works internally.
Additionally, Logseq:
- has HTTP/JSON APIs to power external tools including the ones to export data.
- it uses Datalog for queries that is a very powerful query language, much better than SQL and very popular in some fields.
- it's written in ClojureScript, a Functional Programming language, that makes easy to take a specific portion of the code and use it in other tools, again to export data to other formats without writing everything from scratch (there is already a CLI tool called logseq-query that let you query your graph without Logseq actually running).
- you can use HTML in it (as mentioned in Markdown specification) but also Hiccup that is a Clojure-friendly way to write HTML/CSS, basically allowing the user to remodel the application by adding buttons and even mini-apps in blocks because it can even evaluate ClojureScript.
Now, Obsidian is supposed to be just a Markdown advanced editor but its plugins need special syntax like Dataview's, that is not standard in any way, to provide the same functionalities shipped by Logseq by default and involving more standard and enstablished technologies.
Logseq on the other hand is the convergence of outliners like Org-Mode, a graph database to power a flexible and performant data structure, Datalog query language, everything exposed as HTTP API for max interoperability and to run it over a network and this unique approach of the user remodelling the UI with HTML/CSS/JS, blurring the line between users and developers and between an app and a framework.
Logseq was born as a personal project to provide a modern UI to OrgMode, that 20 years later its first release is still very popular, gets new releases and has a huge ecosystem.
Thinking in terms of "will it still be around?" is something that belongs to the realm of proprietary products and services. Logseq is a piece of that huge amount of software that belongs to humanity known as FOSS. And this is also the reason we are discussing this on Mastodon and not on Twitter.
You are replying repeating what Obsidian team says without actually reading what I said... this is exhausing but for the last time:
If I actually care about a piece of software I can improve it by myself or pay someone to do the work.
This is the key piece you keep skipping: in this world when you want someone to do some work for you you pay them.
Would you buy a house knowing that can be repaired only by the company that sold it to you? Would you risk see that company disappear and you having to abandon your house?
Why would it be different with software?
FOSS projects even have the advantage that fixes and improvements can be made once for all users, present and future, so you will have more people in the same situation as you willing to contribute or support (a portion of) the development.
> “Would you buy a house knowing that can be repaired only by the company that sold it to you? Would you risk see that company disappear and you having to abandon your house? Why would it be different with software?”
Because the cost to stop using an app is trivial compared to the cost to abandon a house you own. Obsidian free. It would be far faster, cheaper, and more efficient to switch to another app than to pay a dev to write custom code to keep an abandoned Logseq working.
What if there are no other apps that meet your needs?
What if your productivity depends on a very good plugin for Obsidian and the same experience can't be reproduced with anything?
Also what alternatives to Obsidian do you currently have?
@post I can’t know what the future will bring. New software comes out often and people switch to it from apps they previously loved and depended on. I try to keep my long-term data as future-proof as possible while using what works best for me for as long as it lasts or until I find something I like better.
Right now if I *had* to I could probably make due with Zettlr, Tangent, or Notenik, or pay NotePlan’s overpriced subscription. Or you know, go all in on Logseq. 😉
@post @EpiphanicSynchronicity I'm determined to *never* make my productivity depend on *any app*. App agnosticism is what I'm going for.
I depend on plain text and folders being around while computers exist. Because of this, I have a large (and growing) number of apps I can use to access the same files, with the same functionality I enjoy now.
*drums fingers on table, trying to think of a cool, future-trending hashtag for this concept*
@ellane @EpiphanicSynchronicity
Congratulations, you have rediscovered as a user one of the principles of Unix philosophy, "Everything is a file".
FYI Unix is the family of operating systems where Linux and MacOS comes from.
The success of Unix is related to storing everything as plain text files and use a composable set of commands to manipulate them.
@EpiphanicSynchronicity @post @ellane "anyone without the skills and time and self-discipline [to maintain an abandoned open source app]" could hire a developer. It's not the same as closed source.
@post @ellane Open-source projects *do* get abandoned. Just because someone can continue to develop an open-source app doesn’t mean they will.
Anyone without the skills *and* the time *and* the self-discipline to do it has no guarantee that someone else will do so, and in a timely way.
If not, they’re eventually going to be looking for a new app—just as they would if they’d been using a closed-source app that stopped development and didn’t get open-sourced or bought out by a new dev.