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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

#111

Post by phforms »

praptak wrote: post #21

It seems AGPL but also has a paid tier which makes me wonder what their business model is. Is it only the hassle of self hosting that stops potential customers from having the paid features for free?

I believe convenience and actually wanting to give something back to the creators would have many people pay for pro features, since it’s actually “Pay once, use for life”, which is a rare and welcome sight in this subscription-flooded world. And it still leaves people with low income the option to (legally?) circumvent payment. Not sure how sustainable this is as a business model, but I think it’s pretty nice compared to being forced into continuous payment.

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

#112

Post by colordrops »

veidr wrote: post #54
colordrops wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying "you do not need oracle to use your bytes on disk". I may be mistaken but doesn't obsidian provide a ton of functionality on top of markdown?

No, just a little bit. Your docs remain 98% compatible with other Markdown editors. The functionality is mainly around a.) better UI for editing Markdown, b.) plugin ecosystem (optional), c.) paid sync (optional, and achievable otherwise e.g. SyncThing, your own rsync script, etc), and d.) optional (and very bad) "publish-as-a-website" feature.

So not much of a value proposition then is what you are saying? Why use it at all?

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

#113

Post by withinboredom »

packetlost wrote: post #106
withinboredom wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want some windows-forms-esq app development, I highly recommend checking out Flutter Flow. It isn’t exactly cheap, but I’ve used it for some basic personal apps.

I kinda doubt FlutterFlow would meet my needs, it looks like it's primarily build on web technologies which is a nonstarter for this.

FlutterFlow is just the UI to build Flutter apps, which yes, is built on web-tech. However, Flutter runs natively on mobile devices.

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

#114

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

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.

What is the benefit of the database version? I like that the backend is in text files. I guess there could be some performance/compression benefits to be had, but given the amount of writing a mortal is likely to do over a lifetime, I am not immediately sold on the idea.

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

#115

Post by int0x29 »

ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #30

What I miss from this type of apps, including notion, is the ability to "inherit" properties from databases. I would like, for example, to create a superdb with basic task properties (title, deadline) and then create subdatabases that add more project-specific properties. This, I'll be able to create a single view with all my tasks for the day in a single place, but also add all the info I need for individual tasks.…

Trilium has attribute inheritance and is scriptable. The default task implementation uses templates though, not inheritance. So you would need to script it.

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

#116

Post by princevegeta89 »

mano78 wrote: post #26

I’ve been self-hosting it for three months now, and I am happy. I came from Joplin; I lost the offline access, but it’s much more “expressive” and nice, so to speak. I don’t miss any other feature, even in the pro version. Doesn’t depend on other docker containers, I just used authelia for auth, and while it uses its own file format I backup the data volume and it’s possible to export manually in simple markdown. The…

Same here. I am self-hosting it on the web on my VPS instance so I can access it from any device and anywhere in the world. And then, I use a self-hosted S3 instance to sync all my installations on devices, including OSX and Android/iPhone. Sync has worked wonderfully well.

I felt with the number of features it has, this program simply knocks out Obsidian in comparison. I would say it is more of a Notion equivalent. I am currently working on a small self-hosted companion for Siyuan that lets users share notes publicly.

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

#117

Post by princevegeta89 »

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, your existing installations on your devices, whatever they are, can read your data as long as you use the correct Repo keys that are used to encrypt stuff. In the worst case, you can deploy the docker instance with older images to keep going on.

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

#118

Post by setopt »

sunshine-o wrote: post #110
zelphirkalt wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tagging is a strictly more powerful tool than hierarchies, at least with same amount tags vs directories/categories, because an item can be tagged using multiple different tags, but can only be in one directory, unless you create duplicates or symlinks or whatever.

I really like tagging but somehow the concept could never become central to any filesystem: - I believe BeOS tried, - MS tried with WinFS but cancelled it in Windows Vista, - I am sure some cloud storage service bet on it but can't cite any. Actually tagging is probably mainly successful in cases where we can reliably automate the tagging such as email or photos.

MacOS has had first-class support for file tagging for years: You can add arbitrary tags either from “Save as” dialogs or from Finder, and can then browse by tags in Finder or search through your file system filtered by tags.

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

#119

Post by zelphirkalt »

sunshine-o wrote: post #110
zelphirkalt wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tagging is a strictly more powerful tool than hierarchies, at least with same amount tags vs directories/categories, because an item can be tagged using multiple different tags, but can only be in one directory, unless you create duplicates or symlinks or whatever.

I really like tagging but somehow the concept could never become central to any filesystem: - I believe BeOS tried, - MS tried with WinFS but cancelled it in Windows Vista, - I am sure some cloud storage service bet on it but can't cite any. Actually tagging is probably mainly successful in cases where we can reliably automate the tagging such as email or photos.

I like tagging for bookmarks in Firefox and derivatives of Firefox.
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