#Logseq honest review
#FOSS with AGPL license (in theory)
In reality it depends on a closed source module responsible for sync, dubious legality and misleading
Developed almost privately by a Venture Capitals funded company but accepting small contributions on GitHub and donations on OpenCollective Store notes in #Markdown (or in less supported #OrgMode) locally Forces indented lists in .md files and it doesn't support normal paragraphs at all Introduces syntax that breaks Markdown in a very bad way instead of using code blocks where possible (in Advanced Queries?) Based on Electron, NodeJS and NPM UI and business logic mixed together, it forces you to always run the whole UI, including for sync Available for Linux on FlatHub (unofficially) AppImage is the only officially supported way to install on Linux No official reproducible builds but unofficial Flatpak ones are reproducible 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 Supports Wayland but not by default Custom CSS Fixed UI, no tabs, no split view Multi-window means multiple conflicting whole instances Plugins platform Plugins marketplace based on GitHub Poor integration of plugins especially from UI/UX PoV Very interesting concept of PDF annotations PDF annotations not stored in the .pdf as standard annotations PDF annotations stored in their own .md files with odd names LaTeX formulas support No native PDF export and in general problematic Too many menus, command palettes and other redundant UI elements Queries with simple syntax and UI Advanced Queries are too often needed Datalog query language in Advanced Queries Very broken aliases feature Inconsistent requirements of capitalize, lowercase etc in query syntax and elsewhere that even break some functionalities Macros Macros don't work with most syntax, including Advanced Queries Supports HTML and Hiccup syntax Supports embedding Web pages using iframes Sync is e2e encrypted The code for e2e encryption can't be audited because it is closed source Tons of functionalities must be configured by editing a EDN file that it is very easy to break Forum based on Discourse Use (and abuse) of Discord, even release announcements are made there 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.
While a fork won't be supported financially by most current MacOS/Windows users, there are many possible improvements for those who care about privacy, including the removal of OpenAI integration.
But since Logseq is still under heavy development a patched version would make more sense than a hard fork.
See for example Bromite browser that is based on Chromium for Android but with many privacy-oriented changes.
About Dendron: being tied to VS Code made it too much developer-oriented and couldn't attract the average PKM users.
I don't know much about Athens but I think that Logseq being a good and probably better alternative was a driving factor.
