#Logseq honest review
๐ข #FOSS with AGPL license (in theory)
๐ด In reality it depends on a closed source module responsible for sync, dubious legality and misleading
๐ก Developed almost privately by a Venture Capitals funded company but accepting small contributions on GitHub and donations on OpenCollective
๐ข Store notes in #Markdown (or in less supported #OrgMode) locally
๐ก Forces indented lists in .md files and it doesn’t support normal paragraphs at all
๐ก Introduces syntax that breaks Markdown in a very bad way instead of using code blocks where possible (in Advanced Queries?)
๐ก Based on Electron, NodeJS and NPM
๐ก UI and business logic mixed together, it forces you to always run the whole UI, including for sync
๐ข Available for Linux on FlatHub (unofficially)
๐ด AppImage is the only officially supported way to install on Linux
๐ก No official reproducible builds but unofficial Flatpak ones are reproducible
๐ก Not in F-droid (and the closed source sync feature wouldn’t be allowed there anyway), you have to grab their APK manually or automatically
๐ข Supports Wayland but not by default
๐ข Custom CSS
๐ก Fixed UI, no tabs, no split view
๐ก Multi-window means multiple conflicting whole instances
๐ข Plugins platform
๐ด Plugins marketplace based on GitHub
๐ก Poor integration of plugins especially from UI/UX PoV
๐ข Very interesting concept of PDF annotations
๐ก PDF annotations not stored in the .pdf as standard annotations
๐ก PDF annotations stored in their own .md files with odd names
๐ข LaTeX formulas support
๐ก No native PDF export and in general problematic
๐ก Too many menus, command palettes and other redundant UI elements
๐ข Queries with simple syntax and UI
๐ก Advanced Queries are too often needed
๐ข Datalog query language in Advanced Queries
๐ก Very broken aliases feature
๐ก Inconsistent requirements of capitalize, lowercase etc in query syntax and elsewhere that even break some functionalities
๐ข Macros
๐ก Macros don’t work with most syntax, including Advanced Queries
๐ข Supports HTML and Hiccup syntax
๐ข Supports embedding Web pages using iframes
๐ข Sync is e2e encrypted
๐ด The code for e2e encryption can’t be audited because it is closed source
๐ก Tons of functionalities must be configured by editing a EDN file that it is very easy to break
๐ข Forum based on Discourse
๐ด Use (and abuse) of Discord, even release announcements are made there
๐ก Some Matrix bridges
Concept: 8/10
Execution: 5/10
CC @logseq
Given the points above and the fact I backed #Logseq for a long time but addressing these issues may require years and maybe the project won’t survive anyway that long, what should I do? Move to a simpler but better supported system like #Emacs or wait and hope Logseq team figure out priorities?
Recent “AI” (sigh) native integration in Logseq (using OpenAI according to a GitHub branch of theirs, again zero communication by the team) lower my hopes a lot.
If they take money from people they should make clear what it will be used for.
They made contributors sign a CLA so in theory they can change the license but only future development would be affected, as always.
They sent an email to contributors saying they want to drop AGPL because some companies like Google don’t like it.
If they move from AGPL to GPL as I suspect it wouldn’t be much different for end users. I don’t think they would turn it into proprietary closed source software, but in theory they could.
I realized that having a non-profit org to ensure open governance is very important. They wouldn’t be able to act like this if they were a KDE or GNOME project.
I am not against companies based on FOSS at all, I welcome them, I just don’t like that they have the final say on the direction of development while also accepting donations.