#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.
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.
