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Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

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Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#21

Post by O_H_E »

ericax wrote: post #15
cxr wrote: post #14

It looks like this isn't open source. If this is supposed to be one's second brain, please at least consider using a time-bomb FOSS license. Something like: you're permitted to use Obsidian under Apache/MIT/GPL license either 7 years after a given release, or effective immediately in the event that Obsidian shuts down.

That's an interesting idea and we'll look into it! We plan to stay in business in the long run, but if things do go wrong and we shut down, we do intend to open source the app.

Oooh, I have been wanting to suggest that. Thanks Erica!

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#22

Post by justtocomment »

Can't comment on the merits of the product itself.

That in the first five minutes of this post being online, several users more or less claim that this has changed their lives in their first-ever comment on HN strikes me as a little odd however.

(Yes I'm aware that this is also my first-ever comment on HN.)

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#23

Post by maurelian »

katktv wrote: post #9

It's not exactly Roam, but the thing looks promising still. I like that it is offline-first and Markdown based, really feels like the crew has got some ideas in what direction to lead this project to. The bi-directional links in themselves are quite a killer feature that makes many note-taking apps like Evernote feel obsolete.

Curious what it's missing that Roam has? I liked the Roam concept, but didn't use it for long before moving to Obsidian because of the privacy model, so I never really got a good feel for it. I still feel like I'm not getting the most out of the bi-directional link functionality everyone loves so much because I keep forgetting to create them.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#25

Post by ericax »

justtocomment wrote: post #22

Can't comment on the merits of the product itself. That in the first five minutes of this post being online, several users more or less claim that this has changed their lives in their first-ever comment on HN strikes me as a little odd however. (Yes I'm aware that this is also my first-ever comment on HN.)

We have been in private beta for a few months already, with 5000+ beta testers and a community. We did let them know that we're doing a "Show HN" today.

Hope that explains things!

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#26

Post by programmarchy »

atfzl wrote: post #20

The graph view seems cool but I don't feel it is much useful in the long term. It has a wow factor in the initial use but it is just a mingled web of links. It is like creating a graph of the www but I don't see how that could be useful.

If the links between node could be directed and annotated, then it'd become much more powerful, though. Similar to how TheBrain works [1]

I see that the public plugin interface is a long term goal at this point [2] but it'd be amazing if plugins could expose ways to mark up graph relationships!

[1] https://www.thebrain.com [2] https://trello.com/c/Z7qqKVXd/19-public-plugin-interface-v10

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#27

Post by amflare »

I want to like this application, and the little time I was able to spend in it certainly displayed a lot of promise. But it only worked for one day. Since then, it will not display any of the files. I know it is still connected since I can make new files and folders and see them appear in my directories, and before I tried to refresh the vault I could still see my tags. But Obsidian refuses to show anything in the file explorer, and unfortunately, that renders the product useless.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#29

Post by greenpizza13 »

The comments here are so positive, I had to try this out. After reading through all the built-in notes and customizing some shortcuts, I have to say this is some very slick software.

I tried Roam before but didn't get into it, but the similarity between this and VSCode makes the barrier to entry very low. The formatting is very nice, the linking is fantastic. I am going to attempt to make this my daily driver for notes.

Great work Obsidian team!

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#30

Post by kotutku »

ericax wrote: post #7

Maker here, excited to be on Hacker News. Obsidian is going into public beta today! (We're also on Product Hunt, come check us out!) We made Obsidian to be your long-term second brain and personal knowledge base. As you put in more notes and make more connections, the knowledge base gets more valuable, so we think it's important that you can 100% own your data and not rely on any cloud services. We believe you second…

Are you going to add some features for more structured data? I'm thinking about tables like in Notion where you can sort by any column. Working with Markdown tables is very clunky.
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