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Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

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Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#351

Post by cyberax »

jdvh wrote: post #56
rtpg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a universe where the French government drops a perfect replacement for Notion and causes Notion to go out of business, this is still a net positive for society in the same way that things like Linux existing is a net positive for society. One should not focus on the economic sphere as the be all and end all. We can just have improvements be distributed to everyone sometimes! We can just do good things through coor…

In the short term a free open source govt alternative may be a net positive for society. I don't think it is in the long run. Government projects like these are not likely to really push the state-of-the-art forward. This project even advertises itself as a FOSS Notion alternative. Do government-sponsored clones encourage or stymie innovation? I think the latter. Every week we read in the news that the EU struggles w…

> Government projects like these are not likely to really push the state-of-the-art forward.

Well, if a government project can easily push you out, then you're not really a state-of-the-art.

> EU subsidized clones of popular American products feels like admitting defeat.

Governments need to think long-term. And one danger of relying on something like Notion is vendor lock-in. You can't easily migrate your data out of Notion, with all the rich content preserved (edit history, text comments, etc.)

EU can try to mandate a common interoperability standard, but it takes years and the end result always ends up being behind the state of the art.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#352

Post by unit149 »

yujzgzc wrote: post #348
bcye wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is MIT licensed not AGPL, explicitly to make it easy to use for anyone. AGPL only applies if you want to use MinIO as your object storage

Thanks for clarifying. They just removed the mention of AGPL due to the confusing nature of it. https://github.com/suitenumerique/docs/commit/c85224af425261...

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Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#353

Post by crazygringo »

frenchtoast8 wrote: post #223

For a while I've been searching for a note taking app that * Allows more than one user editing the same page at once * Is accessible on a mobile device (either app or mobile browser) * Can be at the very least viewed in read only mode if disconnected from the internet The last point is the most important to me and frustratingly has been the most elusive for me to find. For now I use Notion with the hopes they impleme…

Both Google Keep and Google Docs meet your requirements, depending on whether you want small notes or big notes.

What's wrong with those?

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#354

Post by virdev »

kalipso wrote: post #318

Anyone knows if there is something like that with heavy focus on privacy? basically decentralized offline first, end2end encrypted collaborative note taking/knowledgedb is something iam looking for.

We plan on getting e2ee as we have the military are interested in using it. From what we investigated there will be some tradeoff feature wise (attribution of edits will be harder for example). Happy to receive some help on that front.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#355

Post by slevis »

slowtrek wrote: post #143
KronisLV wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, even if this software wouldn't be 1:1 capable of replacing the established players, it still feels like a good idea. With how much people (rightfully) complain about how open source is underfunded and with how often we're forced into borderline exploitative dealings with the established players in the market (the likes of MS Office, Adobe products, Atlassian products, even some Oracle stuff), funding the…

Notion is not an example of delightful software and it is very much one of the most reproducible apps ever. I don't know how they managed to make it fashionable amongst startups, but it's certainly not because it's an innovative product.

Several companies have tried to "reproduce" Notion and have failed. I don't like or use Notion but that is just extremely ignorant of the USP behind it. Dunning–Kruger much?

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#356

Post by slevis »

rtpg wrote: post #34
johndhi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't thought about this a ton - but am I wrong that it sounds crazy and inefficient for the government to essentially compete with private industry? It feels like a colliding of worlds and a cannibalization that doesn't make sense to me. Like - if the government launched a messaging app competitive with WhatsApp and it drew users away from WhatsApp and it had better encryption ... Would that actually be better f…

In a universe where the French government drops a perfect replacement for Notion and causes Notion to go out of business, this is still a net positive for society in the same way that things like Linux existing is a net positive for society. One should not focus on the economic sphere as the be all and end all. We can just have improvements be distributed to everyone sometimes! We can just do good things through coor…

> All the people who were working on Notion now can go get some on the job training to learn to farm.

This would only work if the government replacement would be more efficient than Notion (in the sense that the French government employs less people for a product of the same quality).

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#357

Post by slevis »

0xf8 wrote: post #267
staplers wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is very much one of the most reproducible apps ever Would love to move to an alternative that also works in the browser, got any suggestions? I haven't found one that does what Notion does. I genuinely want to get off their AI training grounds but cannot. Your comment reeks of condescension because you are not the target user.

Acknowledging you want a web-app browser based alternative and this won’t answer your question, feel free to ignore. But as for general notion alternatives, and actually if you prefer to go in the other direction away from web based—Hands down would recommend Obsidian.md above any other open source alternative. While it's not 100% "batteries included" like proprietary apps (though this gap has narrowed considerably),…

Obsidian is on a fundamental level a very different app to Notion (you already mentioned the web app, databases, ...). It is also not even close to being "hackable to the core", it is not open source. That title belongs to Emacs.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#358

Post by modderation »

theflash666 wrote: post #238
Terretta wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, calling the video conferencing capability "Visio" is à la banane.

"Visio" is French slang for a videoconference meeting. Open to suggestions for a project name that better reflects its purpose and vision.

How about "Vidja" -- the .fr domain seems to be available, the top google hit is for an IKEA floor lamp, and it is generally a silly English mispronunciation of "video" (you kids and yer vidja games...) :)

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#359

Post by trees101 »

dtkav wrote: post #322
Terretta wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're familiar with the space, ever heard anything that ticks all these boxes: (a) git versioned (b) CRDTs (c) WYSIWYG but Markdown (esp GFM) (d) front matter + markdown able to be SSGd (e) comfortable UI for not-devs (f) native (Swift) MacOS app, else Tauri/Electron self-hosted client+svc (g) if online, OIDC / SAML SSO Appears this can be cobbled leveraging Obsidian plugins, but unstable due to git vs. CRDT issu…

Dev of the Obsidian Relay plugin [0] here. We support most of this (you'll need to also use Obsidian Git), but haven't released OIDC (please reach out of you need it!). [0] https://system3.md/relay

very interesting, I'm looking for something like this, will check it out. In my obsdian vault, I keep a lot of code snippets and even entire python scripts. Do you see your method as being perhaps an alternative to dedicated github repos for tiny personal projects, replacing a million little repos? And at the same time having notes in the same repo?

Have you solved the git repo index problem, Ive found that large vaults cause a problem and require occasional cleanup:

```bash git gc --prune=now # Garbage collection

git repack -ad # Repacked objects, optimizing repository storage ```

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#360

Post by crabmusket »

palata wrote: post #338
virdev wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have to disagree here. What Notion has built is amazing. When leadership tells us our job is to replace Microsoft Office. I say it's not This is Libre Office's job. While I truly admire this community’s work. If I ever get anywhere close to their level I’ll consider myself lucky. They do important work and I hope they continue for may years . I’m not trying to replace Microsoft Office because work has changed.…

Notion is some kind of Kanban board, isn't it? I think the point of the parent is that such boards were not invented by Notion, and writing a webapp that essentially allows you to move post-its between columns is not exactly innovative. Which is fine, if it works. We don't always need innovation (actually most of the time we don't). Notion just seems to be super popular for just being a webapp of post-its.

Notion has a very flexible data model. We use it mainly for documents, but it also can contain databases, which can be viewed as kanban boards, timelines, etc.

https://www.notion.com/blog/data-model-behind-notion

It's really nice to have one place to go for all kinds of content, but that content can link within itself, @mention other pieces of content, etc.

It can (and does) turn into a huge mess if you let it, of course. But that's down to team culture.

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