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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

#301

Post by Barbing »

godelski wrote: post #214
arcanemachiner wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

Always good to promote these apparent small wins in case the catch on. Do suspect the shift to make, instead of hoping our psychology changes en masse:

Change the model to one of the freebie models that works for high-income earners. High-income earners are OK to make purchases of tangible things where they're promised good is done for the world. Then they enjoy their music and wine (at the gala), or tote bag or whatnot.

We gonna be invited to the first Text Editor Gala?! Maybe not. 50/50 raffle supporting a text editor dev, though, maybe... (ugh a little gambley)

tl;dr give the self-wealth-protecting psychology of the wealthy an out to help them justify their good deed, like NPR sponsor gifts

(to execute - cut some deals with concert venues, restaurants, handmade good purveyors... obtain discounts... then work with developers to set up bespoke relevant rewards for given donation tiers. first part of this plan could be a decent task for the non-developers who wanna contribute to OSS)

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

#304

Post by pabs3 »

UnnoTed wrote: post #249
RobertJacobson wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really cool! Since you are using Qt, as I understand it you will need to pay for a Qt license if you intend to distribute your app as closed source.

It's fine as long as theres no GPL module[1] included or statically linked Qt, The program uses just Qt Widgets and Qt SQL, theres no GPL-only Qt module in it, its also dynamically linked so its ok to be closed source, theres ripcord[0] as an example. I just want to avoid the wave of open source rebranding that will come with AI programming being so easily accessible as theres no respect when theres easy money involv…

Under the LGPL, statically linked Qt is also fine, as long as the user can relink your proprietary code with a modified Qt library.

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

#305

Post by KolenCh »

Ifkaluva wrote: post #127

It’s interesting to me that it says that in some versions of second brain: “Second brain grows, but first brain doesn’t get smarter.” Something I remember Tiago Forte said, which turned me off of his partículas brand of a second brain, is that his goal is to “remember nothing”, and have the second brain surface exactly the context necessary at the moment, which he would proceed to read and ingest. That sounds terribl…

That’s not what he said. And that part is from the GTD principle, much older than the “second brain” wave. That GTD principle, backed by psychological research, is basically saying that you should extract what you have in your mind immediately when you have it / remember it, so that you don’t need to keep it in your mind all the time. That free your mind to perform at optimal capacity. In psychological lab test, they basically test people doing “remember X and perform this next task Y. I’m going to ask you about X after you finish Y.” The mere fact that you need to remember X degrades your performance.

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

#306

Post by henry_kang »

Ifkaluva wrote: post #127

It’s interesting to me that it says that in some versions of second brain: “Second brain grows, but first brain doesn’t get smarter.” Something I remember Tiago Forte said, which turned me off of his partículas brand of a second brain, is that his goal is to “remember nothing”, and have the second brain surface exactly the context necessary at the moment, which he would proceed to read and ingest. That sounds terribl…

[dead]

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

#307

Post by manny_rat »

jatora wrote: post #154
smokel wrote: post #104

Interesting. I recently "vibe-coded" my personal Obsidian clone, because I want proper Emacs keybindings, and Obsidian does not support those, not even through extensions. I do not know what to do with my pet project. I'm using it myself, and it has tons of futures that took quite some effort to get right. For example, WYSIWYG table editing is not trivial, and Claude Opus agrees with me, in the sense that it could no…

I too have vibe-coded my own personal obsidian/sublime replacement in rust, and also ran into WYSIWYG table editing and rendering issues with opus 4.7. Took a couple iterations but now formulas/rendering are perfect. GPT5.5 actually handled that very well compared to 4.7

I would love to hear more about this, did you use a GUI library? Does it perform well?

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

#308

Post by ivolimmen »

Very nice. Coincidentally I was doing the same. I tried multiple alternatives to Obsidian and they where all not it. I also wrote my own but opted for a website version that I host on a PINE64. Also written in Go; it's my first ever product written in Go.

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

#309

Post by msh »

bryanhogan wrote: post #74
thegagne wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all software needs to be for-profit. Simple utility stuff I believe should fit in this category. Things like a text editor. The profit comes from elsewhere, larger more complex systems. Of course someone can TRY to profit off a text editor, but unless it solves complex enough problems (like a full blown IDE, but even then...). The issue is there is intense demand for it, and ALSO easy supply. If someone attempts…

A text editor with good UX is quite complex, I think it's hard to argue otherwise. Most text-editors by large corporations don't even pass this bar.

Emacs and vi(m) have always been free.

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

#310

Post by jaspanglia »

wutanc wrote: post #215
bachmeier wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This actually looks refreshingly simple. A lot of note-taking apps become productivity operating systems after a while.
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