Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

anytype.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 281 posts

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#211

Post by lucideer »

andrewshadura wrote: post #203
lucideer wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source is not the same as free software. There are broadly two camps: Camp 1 who advocate for free software & free software alone, and Camp 2 who advocate for "open source" being an all-encompassing umbrella term for a few things, including free software. Those in Camp 1 are typically not supportive of the goals of those in Camp 2. Those in Camp 2 do often try and equivocate the two terms.

No, it really is. Open source is equivalent to free software in everything but definition, and does not include anything that is not free software. There are minor disagreements between different people from the two camps which licenses to accept (e.g. Debian where this definition originated from, does not consider GFDL with invariant sections free, while FSF apparently does). It really is the whole point of it, defi…

> Open source is equivalent to free software in everything but definition

Is this a typo?

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#212

Post by ianopolous »

benabbottnz wrote: post #209
Svarto wrote: post #202

"any-sync networks are permissionless. This means that anyone who knows the IP and port of the coordinator node can connect to it, create new spaces, or download existing encrypted objects. Data inside spaces is always secure, as it requires space encryption keys to read it." From the docs on self-hosting. I am not a security expert, does anyone know if this is still considered safe? Feels weird that anyone can downl…

Surely that’s just the nature of IPFS, right?

Not necessarily. You can add auth at the encrypted block level: https://peergos.org/posts/bats

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#213

Post by mcfedr »

JSavageOne wrote: post #144
pgeorgi wrote: post #28

Note, their idea[0] of "open source" doesn't match the popular Open Source Definition [1] [0] https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-kotlin/blob/main/LICENSE... [1] https://opensource.org/osd/

So what is the appropriate term then for "source code freely available, but cannot be used for commercial use?" I guess probably an unpopular opinion here, but I don't see why "open source" must imply that anyone should be allowed to fork the repo and sell it.

It's not freely available, it's available for a limited set of uses. So it's not open source.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#214

Post by IshKebab »

zoogeny wrote: post #123
pgeorgi wrote: post #28

Note, their idea[0] of "open source" doesn't match the popular Open Source Definition [1] [0] https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-kotlin/blob/main/LICENSE... [1] https://opensource.org/osd/

A lot of the comments to this are angry and I can appreciate that. There is obviously some specific nuance to "open source" that individuals in this thread want to maintain and feel that the OSI has enshrined in stone as a definition that no one shall breach. However, I strongly support the kind of license (in principle) that this software is released under. Source code is available for anyone to inspect, modify for…

I think the issue is that they say "open source!" with no further qualification. That's misleading and disingenuous.

I support the use of alternative business models like source available, Business Source License etc. That's fine. But you should accurately describe your licensing. They should have said "source available".

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#215

Post by api »

catapart wrote: post #22

This is awesome! Love to see more local-first, security-focused apps! Especially ones that are free. Asking because I'm currently working on a local-first app that I am gaming out how to sync to non-local networks: The docs state that the app syncs to local P2P networks. Does that mean it doesn't sync across the internet? If so, is that because of the cost of maintaining/renting a TURN server? Or is there a technical…

Looking forward to seeing if it syncs across ZeroTier networks. They emulate a LAN including multicast so it might work out of the box.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#216

Post by picometer »

smokel wrote: post #30
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating systems should be providing spellcheck to textboxes everywhere anyway. Makes no sense every app rolling their own and not using my operating system dictionary with my own corrections. Extremely frustrating every Electron app just rolls their own rubbish spellcheck, or doesn't have it at all.

That's an interesting take on things. Would you want your operating system to provide a web browser, pdf viewer, and spreadsheet as well? To me it makes no sense that software does not interoperate very well. I think most of this is due to the historical evolution of computers and software. A spell checker used to take up an insane amount of memory, a browser is a competitive product, and interfaces for proper intera…

Yeah, I suspect the grandparent comment meant that spellcheck (and perhaps other tools, like you listed) should be standardized. And thanks to the big cos (Apple and Microsoft) doing full vertical integration of their stack and calling it their “operating system”, that term is increasingly getting used for something more than just “the thing that operates your computational resources and safely exposes their APIs for developer use”.

That said, it would be interesting to see more actual OS development that innovated on supporting/encouraging more standards, without getting too proprietary or centralized.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#217

Post by junipertea »

chambers wrote: post #74

The proportion of philosophy to features in their marketing seems off. They say "trust our code, not our words" and then spend several paragraphs of words talking up their ideals. It feels like something is being hidden or talked around. Data-independence may be one aspect that's not transparent. Compared to https://obsidian.md/ , I can't just use raw Markdown or CSV file with Anytype. I've paid Obsidian $300+ just b…

To be fair, you can compile the code (including the protobuf format) and implement your own export to any format. It's a bit obtuse, but I had a obsidian vault full of markdown files that are also completely useless as they have a bunch metadata that needs the obsidian plugin to render. This is not a critique of obsidian, but there is a limit of markdown and obsidian is bypassing it using a lot of extra code. If obsidian got deleted from the internet, I would have my markdown files but a lot of the processing would be gone.

If we were to store markdowns only with linking and no advanced tables, do we need any advanced app on top?

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#218

Post by cjbprime »

pronkin wrote: post #48
iFire wrote: post #39

I don't understand this license. It's not open-source. https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-ts/blob/main/LICENSE.md

Co-founder of anytype is here. The most of are repos are open-source. We have our philosophy regarding open source here https://blog.anytype.io/our-open-philosophy/ Happy to discuss concerns regarding our approach.

This is not an open source license:

https://opensource.org/osd/

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#219

Post by klabb3 »

catapart wrote: post #22

This is awesome! Love to see more local-first, security-focused apps! Especially ones that are free. Asking because I'm currently working on a local-first app that I am gaming out how to sync to non-local networks: The docs state that the app syncs to local P2P networks. Does that mean it doesn't sync across the internet? If so, is that because of the cost of maintaining/renting a TURN server? Or is there a technical…

> In trying to come up with a WebRTC solution, I think I've settled on defeat. The local network syncing works like a charm, but I haven't had any luck in trying to get around a TURN server by using an API endpoint to provide routing data. It would be nice if there were other prebuilts than COTURN (something deployable to a deno/node server would be ideal),

The bad news is that if you want something that works in all instances, you need a relay of _some_ sort, because p2p isn't possible/feasible in all cases. Bittorrent (for instance) works around that limitation by simply having many-to-many peering and relying on large numbers, to be reliable. But that doesn't work for 1:1.

The good news is that maintaining a relay (or TURN, with WebRTC), need not be expensive. Yes, you need a server, and perhaps some IP-based rate limiting, but that can handle a LOT of connections and small data.

I created https://github.com/betamos/rdv for this purpose, an extremely light-weight alternative to WebRTC, but for TCP only (BYO identity, auth and encryption). The p2p success rate is, anecdotally, very high. However, you cannot use it from a web browser.

Feel free to reach out (see profile), happy to chat about p2p whether or not you use this project.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#220

Post by jrm4 »

sharipova wrote: post #120
number6 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My feeling to: feels like a free sample and then they will lock you in

(co-founder of anytype) the whole purpose of anytype is user autonomy from software provider. The data standard is open. The code is open. You can self-host your network of backup nodes (tech skills required as this is self-hosting alpha released this week). The app is local first with p2p sync (you remove the back up node, you still have your data and still have sync in local networks). Most importantly you control…

If you care to answer then -- what is the thing that you provide that I must pay for? As in, if I don't give you money, then I don't get ....
Post reply on HN