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Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

anytype.io

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Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#161

Post by pronkin »

dspillett wrote: post #129
pronkin wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our philosophy surrounding open-source is uncomplicated and clear. All essential protocols and data formats are subject to the MIT license. However, considering our clients' needs and with the MongoDB situation as a reference, we must maintain some degree of defensibility. Our objective is to foster a collaborative atmosphere, co-creating with the community. The size of the community matters to us; when it reaches a…

Your goals sound laudable, but they do not alter the fact that your use of the term “open source” is, deliberately or otherwise, misleading. > Our philosophy surrounding open-source is uncomplicated and clear. It does not appear to be the case that your philosophy surrounding open-source is clear. You state very clearly, without caveats, that the product is open-source, which strongly implies that the product is, wel…

Most of our repositories are MIT licensed, which holds significant value. Some of our repositories are source-available. We believe we are building an open-source product, and we reserve the right to define what 'open-source' means for us. Our only prohibition is against competitors making minor modifications and then selling our product. Our position on this is clear. We recognize that our definition may not align with others' perspectives here, and we are open to understanding that. However, labeling our approach as dishonest isn't something we consider accurate. To avoid any confusion for those who uphold the traditional notion of 'open source', we will change the term 'open source' to 'open code' on our website.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#162

Post by mbreese »

pronkin wrote: post #104
Zambyte wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I see the networking portions of the code are Free Software - that's great. How are people expected to use it if their use does not fall under "non-commercial use" as defined in the client license? Do you expect people to write their own clients for commercial use, or do you offer commercial licenses?

For non-commercial use, you're prohibited from selling it, but using it within your organization is permitted

You do realize this also means that a for-profit company can’t use the software at all, right?

Unmodified, modified, whatever.

I don’t think that was your intent, but that’s exactly how it reads. Or maybe that is your intent?

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#163

Post by 6uhrmittag »

Sorry but the landing page is super annoying.

Everything gives the impression of being clickable and not even half of it is.

Then I click on "crazy fast loading times" and a slow popups overlay appears.. the slider and the animations are feel deliberately annoying - slow slide.. when a slide is in the center it stops.. takes a deep breath and then is beeing reminded that it has to load it's three arms and bubbles... and all that for explaining in 2 sentence what open source is.

(And the overlay not being dismissable with ESC is annoying)

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#164

Post by mbreese »

Zambyte wrote: post #148
pronkin wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we want to provide other organizations with the opportunity to offer paid sync services, we needed to incorporate the concept of a network into the license. We crafted the license with that consideration in mind

> Because we want to provide other organizations with the opportunity to offer paid sync services Why do you think the GPL is not compatible with this?

Exactly…

Plus, they can always offer other licenses in addition to the GPL (or really AGPL would be a better fit for their concerns). It’s their software, so they can license it to anyone with whatever terms they want. (Assuming there aren’t outside contributions, but even that can be dealt with)

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#165

Post by hedgehog »

This looks pretty nice. I use Notion at work and mostly like it but not for personal data because I want everything available to back up on a physical disk. I've been burned too many times with data getting stuck in an inaccessible format when upstream apps get orphaned. Today my primary storage is files on disk in common formats (Markdown, PDFs, JPEGs, etc).

Questions: Is there a way to get at the underlying documents stored in Anytype? Is there any path to a web accessible version for clients too small to host the full dataset? Use case is to host around 50GB of notes, records, and photos in one place.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#166

Post by mbreese »

pronkin wrote: post #110
rebeccaskinner wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the term Open Source for a product when most of the code is under a license that isn’t Open Source feels dishonest to me. The product you build is certainly yours to release however you see fit, but if I’m looking for open source software and I find this I’m going to be extremely skeptical of everything you say. On top of that, the license itself is actually incredibly restrictive. I’m not a lawyer, but my read…

Thank you the comment, it's clear that licence is not clear and we need to improve. Our idea is straightforward: if you want to use the software, you can do so for free, whether for personal use or within an organization. However, if you aim to sell it for profit, you need to contribute to its creation in some way; this is why permission is required. At least, that's the case at this early stage.

Serious question - did you have a lawyer write this? The license text and some of the comments here lead me to believe that it wasn’t done by a lawyer.

If not, you should really talk to a lawyer first about this. Preferably one with knowledge of open source licensing. New software licenses are tricky and should be done by a lawyer and not by random HN comments. (Even if this is an overly well informed set of users on software).

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#167

Post by maxloh »

pronkin wrote: post #139
Zambyte wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not use the GPL?

Because we want to provide other organizations with the opportunity to offer paid sync services, we needed to incorporate the concept of a network into the license. We crafted the license with that consideration in mind

You may employed a wrong strategy.

To prevent paid sync services, you should license your protocols and data formats in AGPL, which requires derivative work (third-party sync services) to be open sourced.

The client app in contrast, should be fine even in permissive licenses.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#168

Post by maxloh »

number6 wrote: post #87
andrewshadura wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You deny your users the most basic freedom there is, the freedom to use your software for any purpose without discrimination. This is wrong, and so is your attempt to misuse and redefine the term "open source software".

This is the second time today that someone mistakes open source and free software. See: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.... I don't blame you, it's a bit schadenfreude on my part because "open source" companies try to dress as free software but aren't

Which is the first time?

Any hacker news link?

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#169

Post by Zambyte »

mbreese wrote: post #164
Zambyte wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because we want to provide other organizations with the opportunity to offer paid sync services Why do you think the GPL is not compatible with this?

Exactly… Plus, they can always offer other licenses in addition to the GPL (or really AGPL would be a better fit for their concerns). It’s their software, so they can license it to anyone with whatever terms they want. (Assuming there aren’t outside contributions, but even that can be dealt with)

> Plus, they can always offer other licenses in addition to the GPL

Yep, that's exactly what I was thinking. They're clearly offering alternative licenses to the one in the public repository. There is no reason the same tactic couldn't be applied with the GPL.

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