Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

Obsidian as I recall, is closed source, and they give some weird non reasons for that, so it’s not radical to assume they’re doing something ‘not in the open’, so not a good contender when talking about owning your data and data independence!

Moreover, the statements just meant you don’t have to take our ‘words’ for it, here’s the proof. And in a different context, developers explained their motivations and what they’re inspired by, to work on this kind of software. There’s absolutely no over the top ‘marketing’ to any type as well, as they explained in different post, they don’t want to market, buy built in customer base with VC money and so on.

You can use anytype for free if you use your own resources (storage, backup). There is an option to selfhost, or just use locally with local sync. You can also become a member of our association and it’s membership based, it will give you backup (if you don’t want to handle it yourself) and some things on top for those who want their spaces to be discoverable in our network. If you use privately for your team/org you may not be interested in paying. That’s ok with us :) joining the association and paying is voluntary. We have a principal of universal accessibility

Anytype aims to be an open ecosystem. We open the source code. Now will announce the contributor program. We will start with translations and gallery of templates, then imports/data adaptors, then design themes and extensions.

Account creation happens on your device without an internet connection. Just the encryption key is generated. Anytype does not have a central registry of users. So i think you are misinterpreting it. We have no central registry where you create an account

So firstly - been an Anytype beta user for a while here, and it's great to see the launch! And how far Anytype has come on recently - a previous frustration admittedly was that the app and data sync could feel quite sluggish at times, and the latest release is way snappier and feels more stable! Excited to see how the project develops.

I did want to echo some of the points already raised regarding licensing.. From the outset, when I heard of the Anytype project some time ago, the whole thing that got me excited about it, and why I've been following it so attentively for so long, was the promise of an "open source, privacy-first, p2p, Notion alternative". While I'm sure we can all respect the licensing model you've settled on from a commercial perspective, and being source-available with select open source components is far more welcome over a fully closed model, it clearly does not make the project as a whole open source. While that's quite disappointing, it's positive to see you're acknowledging this and tweaking how you present the open source nature of the project to accurately reflect!

I did just want to ask however if you might have considered a licensing model similar to a project like Sentry? They also fully open source select components under permissive licences (MIT/Apache), but for key commercial elements they instead adopt the Business Source Licence (https://open.sentry.io/licensing/). This is very similar to the terms of your "Any Source Available License" in allowing personal use but restricting commercial use, with the very key caveat that it only enforces these restrictions for a period of 36 months, after which point the licence for those elements reverts to Apache 2.0.

Such a restriction would in theory protect commercial interests in a similar manner (only code from more than 36 months ago, or whatever delay preferred, is fully open sourced), but make the project far more open in spirit, and critically allay concerns Anytype will otherwise attract as a non open source project. For example - what happens if Anytype go closed in future once people are already bought in / if the organisation or development ceases at some point / if some decision was to be made in future which compromises user privacy or security, etc! A key element of open source is that trust doesn't just come from saying "trust me, honest!", but also from the licensing model - if the project disappears or is somehow compromised, it can be forked. Such a licence would allow this (with a delay!)

Might you have considered such a license, and if so would be curious your thoughts on why that isn't your preferred approach?