From the top of the readme:
> without the formatting complexity of markdown
Really, markdown is complicated of all things?
Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline
371–380 of 484 posts
Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline
#372Earlier 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…
> 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).
This one felt obvious, but it feels a bit hard to reason on.
How many sales people does this project need? It’s not zero because grants etc but let’s not kid ourselves.
I think this project will never spend as much money as notion on devs. Like ever.
I will grant that there’s a good idea around “well notion was doing operations for everyone at once so people don’t need as many tech/ops people ”. I’m hopeful that hosted variants pop up to help with this. I’m also hopeful that we can figure out how to make stuff easier to host when high availability is not a requirement.
So maybe we end up net more operators, and less sales people and devs. That’s kind of interesting!
Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline
#373From the top of the readme: > without the formatting complexity of markdown Really, markdown is complicated of all things?
For non technical people used to WYSIWYG, yes?
Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline
#374Wonder how good this is at resolving merge conflicts:
> Offline? No problem, keep writing, your edits will get synced when back online
Have been burned too many times in college.
person 1: is updating doc
person 2: is updating doc
person 3; updating doc
(( doc reaches a dozen pages ))
person 3 loses internet connection but everyone else continues working
Person 3 adds and edits a handful of pages while offline while #1, #2 keep chugging along.
#3 internet is restored and now the system attempts to merge in their changes and sync changes from #1, #2. At the same time, #1, #2 receiving updates from #3
Now chaos ensues as the system is throwing a shit ton of errors and old changes getting reverted. Immediate showstopper.
Not so fun times. And a lesson learned.
Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
May I clarify my comment. Trust was maybe a different word , maybe hope is the correct word ? (but doesn't everybody trust hope) But I trust the people who can make me hope for a better future by actively not submitting to those people who are actively trying to reduce my hope in better future. There is absolutely no denying that what Trump has done , has absolutely made many people really hopeless. Such levels of in…
Why do you put spaces before commas? It's unnecessary and makes your writing obnoxious to read.
Noted.
Mostly I try it to create space / distinguish the comma, I think It has been ingrained in me for quite some time.
I think I misunderstood the rule of space after comma to include it before comma as well.
Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I think Europe is hopeless. It’s an old continent full of old people who have a deeply vested interest in maintaining the status quo" By this , do you mean the Average age of a person or birth rate or what exactly , because I think europe doesn't have those issues. Are you mentioning the fact that Europe has power vested in the old. Doesn't everybody ? Maybe you are mentioning this in the fact that europe doesn't ha…
Look at population pyramids. Europe is old. Most people are looking up to retirement and their pensions. The system is unsustainable and predatory on young people. They pay an overwhelming amount of taxes to sustain this system. It also needs massive immigration which causes severe security and cultural problems, but they don’t care as long as that guarantees they will get their pension. Same about housing. It’s old…
Basically housing & pensions ?
Don't they pay for the pensions from their own money, something like Social Security?
Housing is a problem in every country and I totally agree about that. I myself, really like the georgist philosophy of economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
I doubt if this system really is broken. Catering to the old people's pensions so that they can live and unlike america's social security system which was recently cut by doge, which impacts every old person. I think it's decent? What suggestions do you think could help with the pensions scheme
Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline
#377Was just thinking how my team can get off current Notion lock in, this looks promising. Might be able to contribute as well, being a Django shop.
Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
Building this allows them to reduce the subsidy that is perpetual software license fees.
In exchange for perpetual development and maintenance costs. Total cost of ownership doesn't go down by rolling your own in-house.
If that's true in a large organization, how do SaaS companies actually make a profit?
If you develop an in-house tool, you have very predictable user numbers so you can go on-prem versus cloud for the compute and save ~10x on that side.
You also have the benefit of being second, the other guys already did the hard work of UX research etc. and your in-house team just needs to replicate a slightly complicated CRUD app.
The one significant roadblock I can see is being able to put together the right team for the job. But cost-wise it has to be a no-brainer that in-house is cheaper.
Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline
#379Earlier 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.
You misunderstand what notion is
Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Government projects today, you mean.
The government could act like an immortal mega corp if it had the authority to do so. Such as pushing out competition via loss leaders. And as a bonus, with the government, every program can be a loss leader.
The funding potential for this pattern is constrained today, which is why government projects that compete with private industry are generally terrible. But, clearly, the money is there to be captured by this segment out of government funding generally, if the government is allowed to enter business directly.
The solid argument I see against allowing such actions is a slippery slope towards the above. Slippery slope arguments aren’t always correct, of course, but they aren’t always wrong either; they just point out a risk. Depending on one’s risk tolerance, it is wise to avoid slippery slopes when you can’t quantify just how steep it is.