@kepano

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.

@kepano

You can release it with a GPL license and whoever makes changes and redistribute it would be forced to release it with GPL. This means you can pick the changes and merging them back to Obsidian is you found those valuable.

Maybe the original Obsidian developers only knew about permissive FOSS licenses and not the Copyleft ones like GPL?

@post Did you take a look at the forum threads I shared? The answer to your question is there.

@kepano

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?

@kepano

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.

@post @kepano

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 😊

@kepano

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 ☺️

@kepano

> 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!

@kepano

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.

@kepano

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

@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.

@post @EpiphanicSynchronicity @kepano Hobby-horse anyone?

@gizmo @EpiphanicSynchronicity @kepano

Well Twitter diaspora brought here a lot of people that it seems need to understand things the hard way, sadly: we spent years saying how much bad social network silos are and now that we are proven right, the newcomers insist with their convenience-driven attitude, in this case supporting closed source PKM and even claiming to be user-centric.

@post There are a lot of reasons an indie dev wouldn’t want to go open source, too. Maybe they don’t want someone to use their own app to compete against them by forking the code they spent thousands of hours developing.

I don’t *know* that Logseq didn’t cut a secret backroom deal with their investors. But I’m not hectoring the Logseq devs and community about it; no one’s making me use it.

Please accept that whether Obsidian is open or closed source isn’t your choice or mine to make.

@EpiphanicSynchronicity

> There are a lot of reasons an indie dev wouldn’t want to go open source, too. Maybe they don’t want someone to use their own app to compete against them by forking the code they spent thousands of hours developing.

This is exactly why I'm arguing in favor of Copyleft licenses like GPL all the time: they are the original Free Software ones that are meant to protect developers from others taking advantage of their work without contributing back.

The permissive licenses came later together with an effort by corporations to rebrand Free Software as "Open Source" and enable their predatory practices.

Maybe it's not me that needs to "accept" things but people that needs more informations?

@post

Remember, I agreed with you that Logseq shouldn’t switch to a permissive license for that reason. But a copyleft license still lets someone compete against you with your own code; they just have to share any modifications or additions they make to it.

The Obsidian devs are aware of all of your points in favor of a copyleft license, but that hasn’t convinced them to make the choice you’d prefer.

That’s up to them, just as it’s up to you whether or not to use their software.

@EpiphanicSynchronicity

> The Obsidian devs are aware of all of your points in favor of a copyleft license, but that hasn’t convinced them to make the choice you’d prefer.

> That’s up to them, just as it’s up to you whether or not to use their software.

Then they shouldn't claim their decisions are in the best interest of users, like their new CEO just did, while Logseq's not despite it being FOSS.

Logseq can even accept investments by third parties, because the users rights are secured by a FOSS license.