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 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.
> 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?
> 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.
@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.