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Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

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Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#211

Post by fwn »

andix wrote: post #178
HDMI_Cable wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which really begs the question: why not have it open-source at that point? Obsidian isn't making money from things hidden in the code, but rather their Sync service. Might as well open-source it (and perhaps get more people helping with the development), keep the Sync service, and stem competitor projects like these in the bud.

Because then someone might fork it into a new product with their own sync service.

I doubt that. There are competing sync extensions in their extension store. If you do not want to use extensions, you can sync the vault folder with any syncing app for free.

The whole data structure is designed to make this easy.

I chose Syncthing for this purpose, and it is free and works flawlessly. You can even trivially disable their native sync, as it comes as an internal extension.

Mozilla could have avoided so much drama with Pocket, VPN, AI features, etc., if they just were as transparent and liberal with critical first-party services as Obsidian is.

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#212

Post by GlitchRider47 »

zakirullin wrote: post #210

Maybe the app should be available at files.md? Not under app.files.md? What do you think?

Idk it's pretty common practice to have your landing page at the base url, with the app itself located on a subdomain. Off the top of my head I think of standardnotes, linkwarden, raindrop.

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#213

Post by ytpete »

appplication wrote: post #97
trvz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the developers get compensated for their work how?

I don’t mean to be condescending but it feels like if this were an important question it would have halted OSS development decades ago.

But if the flip side (getting compensated) wasn't also an important concern then maybe far more software would be OSS in recent decades...

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#214

Post by godelski »

arcanemachiner wrote: post #183
godelski wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not sponsor projects that you get value out of? I'm not saying you have to, but you asked how they get compensated and there's nothing stopping you from giving them money. It's easy to forget that you get a lot of value out of something and not give back. If you end up getting a good paying job with your programming experience just buy your favorite projects "a beer" one a month, or once a year. God knows it's…

Donationware is a viable business model for basically nobody. Most people won't pay for something if they don't have to.

  > Most people won't pay for something if they don't have to.
Sure, but most people don't need to. Only a small portion need to for the model to be viable. Scale is useful here.

It doesn't work because people that make $100k+ salaries wont buy their "friend" a beer. It's not failing because a bunch of poor people don't donate.

And it is viable because many things already operate this way. The most profitable ones have just convinced companies to donate. That shouldn't be required, but I'm not ignoring the reality.

Besides, this is a reality that is solvable simply by a small percentage of people going "you know what? I will donate". Not "everybody", just a very very small proportion. Let's take ripgrep as an example. Who knows how many people use this, but there's over 64k stars. Let's say 1% donate $5/mo. That's $3.2k/mo for burntsushi, I'm pretty sure he'd be happy with that. He's also a prolific HN user so maybe he'll even respond.

My point is that all it takes is a mental shift from a small number of people. This isn't some "we need huge collaboration therefore it'll never happen" type of thing, this is "I can take action and have meaningful impact today" type of thing.

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#215

Post by wutanc »

bachmeier wrote: post #102
himata4113 wrote: post #14

This made me realize that obsidian is *not* opensource, but in a way obsidian made me feel like it was opensource. Obviously now that I researched it, it is quite obvious that it is not, but still it 'feels' like it should be opensource.

The data is open and stored in markdown format. Plugins are open source. The core product is not open source, but it's also just an electron app. I've always viewed Obsidian as the inverse of an open core product.

I don't really mind this way of doing it since I know that my data is "safe". I can at any time just grab my vault and open it in any editor. I can write my own editor. I can import the data into most other tools. It's when the data isn't open that I tend to avoid the product.

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#217

Post by backscratches »

LinuxAmbulance wrote: post #100
zakirullin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Server setup before the rewrite: docker + php-fpm + php7 + larvel + nginx + redis + cron + worker + certbot Server after the rewrite to Golang: server, a 15MB no-dependencies binary that has everything.

That is a pretty strong argument for Go!

This is the reason I like go and rust so much

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#218

Post by backscratches »

prepend wrote: post #67

This is neat, but I need a non-server-side program for this. I want everything local and running for the next 20+ years.

I recommend the helix text editor with the markdown-oxide LSP (and rumdl formatter if you feel fancy). All open source and even if you never update them they will work forever.

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#219

Post by thr1owaway9621 »

I wonder if markdown will slowly fall out of favor for note taking, because AI can generate gorgeous-looking HTML essentially for free.

I saw this bit of advice on twitter last week -- to use HTML as the target output for your LLM when you do planning or discussion sessions. And it's been very nice. It's so much easier to parse lots of info when it's presented in an organized/color-coordinated HTML file (potentially with some limited interactivity, and SVG drawings), rather than a block of markdown.

I now wonder if I should give my personal notes the same treatment. The only disadvantage HTML has relative to markdown is that HTML is harder to write and style. But you now have LLMs for that. And HTML/CSS/JS lets you customize your notes in whatever way you want. If you use HTML, any browser becomes your "note-viewing" app, and HTML is just as easy to store and move around as markdown, because it's just plain text.

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#220

Post by Igor_Wiwi »

One thing I still miss in most markdown tools is good rendering/sharing of large architecture docs and Mermaid diagrams. I ended up building my own markdown file reader - https://mdview.io which handles large diagrams/tables much better than typical note apps
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