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Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

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Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#41

Post by jraph »

oefrha wrote: post #36

The licensing is kind of strange. Self-hosted syncing is supposedly a paid feature, and there are indeed license checks in the code, but unlike your typical open core product with a separately licensed ee/ directory, this one including license checking code is entirely under AGPL, and FAQ specifically stresses “SiYuan is completely open source”. As such one can patch out the license check (literally a one line change…

My company does exactly this intentionally for everything we sell at our extension store. Everything under LGPL, license checks that you could bypass with not much effort.

It allows selling actually free software and can work well if you do this well.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#42

Post by oefrha »

jraph wrote: post #41
oefrha wrote: post #36

The licensing is kind of strange. Self-hosted syncing is supposedly a paid feature, and there are indeed license checks in the code, but unlike your typical open core product with a separately licensed ee/ directory, this one including license checking code is entirely under AGPL, and FAQ specifically stresses “SiYuan is completely open source”. As such one can patch out the license check (literally a one line change…

My company does exactly this intentionally for everything we sell at our extension store. Everything under LGPL, license checks that you could bypass with not much effort. It allows selling actually free software and can work well if you do this well.

Yeah I know this is a fairly well-trodden model recommended by FSF (okay, maybe I shouldn’t have called it kinda strange). I’m not confident it works out in most cases, though. So I’m wondering if it’s intentional in this case.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#43

Post by ghgr »

I can also recommend Trilium Notes [1], which I have been happily using for years. It's currently in "maintenance mode", which I personally see as a feature (no risk of bloatware).

Self-hosted, great webapp, optional native clients and works offline.

https://github.com/zadam/trilium

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#44

Post by pg999w »

Pooge wrote: post #39
skaragianis wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The file format isn't markdown, instead a proprietary format in JSON

I'm not an Obsidian user, but I agree with their "file over app" philosophy.[1] If SiYuan stops being developed, are the files still readable/parse-able? [1]: https://stephango.com/file-over-app

Yes, if SiYuan stops being developed, you can still get your notes exported as markdown files. Since SiYuan is open-source, you can also use the internal code to parse the JSON format notes.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#45

Post by hajimuz »

rukshn wrote: post #38
sourraspberry wrote: post #31

I've been using this for a couple of years on my home-server. It's an Obsidian knock-off. It's pretty janky and the documentation is lacking. It's open-source which is nice... But the company behind it is ??? I don't know. They are Chinese but I couldn't find much about them. I use it because I can self-host it, it has most of the features Obsidian has, and I can use it in a web-browser from anywhere - which is the b…

I also installed it on my computer to give it a try, but then as you mentioned I could not find who are behind it other than it's based in China. So decided to just keep with Obsidian

They open sourced it and you can self hosted. I mean, does it even matter where they are from? Why it’s automatically suspicious when you know the authors are Chinese.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#46

Post by bflesch »

oefrha wrote: post #40
rukshn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also installed it on my computer to give it a try, but then as you mentioned I could not find who are behind it other than it's based in China. So decided to just keep with Obsidian

Took me like a minute to find out who are behind it. Committers on GitHub project point to two profiles: - https://github.com/88250 - https://github.com/Vanessa219 The first profile has a README (zh-CN, easily translated) introducing themselves as a married couple as well as their career trajectory leading to their current company. Googling the company name leads me to https://www.tianyancha.com/company/3153162387 sh…

The link you posted gives me "According to relevant legal regulations, access is temporarily not supported in your current location." and "If your device or the Wi-Fi environment you are in is using a VPN service, please disable it and try again."

I'm not using any VPN. Normal internet from Germany

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#47

Post by dammaj »

sourraspberry wrote: post #31

I've been using this for a couple of years on my home-server. It's an Obsidian knock-off. It's pretty janky and the documentation is lacking. It's open-source which is nice... But the company behind it is ??? I don't know. They are Chinese but I couldn't find much about them. I use it because I can self-host it, it has most of the features Obsidian has, and I can use it in a web-browser from anywhere - which is the b…

I assume you want to self host in order to sync locally, right? If that's the case, you can use Obsidian with git plugin and you get sync + versioning (all what git offers).

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#48

Post by K0balt »

janwillemb wrote: post #32
coldblues wrote: post #29

I keep seeing these note-taking tools pop up again and again. I am heavily invested into Logseq already and the new database version is coming out soon. Unless these tools provide import and export utilities to convert your notes between the most popular applications like Logseq and Obsidian, only new users will use them and people with very few notes who can put in the time to move.

Creating a note taking, personal productivity app is an elaborate but common procrastination technique for developers.

I feel exposed lol

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#49

Post by adhamsalama »

skaragianis wrote: post #23
adhamsalama wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not open source?

It locks your efforts to the vendor/project which is different to Obsidian

It is still open source, not proprietary, and you can export files to Markdown anyway.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#50

Post by adhamsalama »

Pooge wrote: post #39
skaragianis wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The file format isn't markdown, instead a proprietary format in JSON

I'm not an Obsidian user, but I agree with their "file over app" philosophy.[1] If SiYuan stops being developed, are the files still readable/parse-able? [1]: https://stephango.com/file-over-app

It's open source, so yes, and you can export files to Markdown anyway.
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