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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

#431

Post by artur_makly »

KronisLV wrote: post #75
nchagnet wrote: post #6

This is a really great project from both the French and German governments. I think state-funded open source solutions to digital platforms is a fantastic opportunity to get away from the big tech walled gardens. Of course, there is always the risk that this becomes unmaintained in the future, but the community at least can take over. But until then, it's a nice platform and a nice contribution to the community.

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…

But wouldn't a DAPP solution would solve even more problems.. faster? What am I missing?

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#432

Post by aetherspawn »

Pi9h wrote: post #343
aetherspawn wrote: post #337

I’ve been looking for something like this that also has a Whiteboard feature (think Miro) to deploy self-hosted at a small business. It has taken me these places: Obsidian - has whiteboard, but not collaborative. Sync plugin cannot be self hosted. Open source sync doesn’t have user management. Affine - ditto. Also not completely open source. Logseq - ditto. Some text editing features require advanced knowledge of dat…

I am building Docmost (Open-source alternative to Confluence and Notion). We have integrated support for Excalidraw, Draw.io and Mermaid diagrams; Plus real-time collaboration. Github: https://github.com/docmost/docmost

This looks really good.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#435

Post by regularjack »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #394
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…

This will be a controversial take here on HN: I'm not too excited about governments getting directly involved in the development of software, let alone open source. With possibly a few exceptions (internal software for national agencies, etc.), it is way outside their area of expertise. I think it would be better to pay a vendor like Redhat or SuSE or Cannonical to do it. And, the gov't can write the support contract…

I'd much rather have my government finance open source software for citizens to use than whatever tech behemoth of a foreign country.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#437

Post by kmacdough »

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.

It's much more generic than that. It's highly flexible and intuitive hierarchical information organization software. At least that's how I'd describe it.

The innovation isn't the organized structures themselves either, but rather the intuitive non-technical interface for rapidly and concurrently updating both the information and structure. You can build a lot of Jira-like features but it doesn't dictate much of how you do that.

It does have a highly customizable Kanban view of their more generic database structure where each object is itself a page which can be filled with anything and everything else Notion has to offer (including more databases). Databases can have many views, structured as calendars, tables and a couple other forms I don't use, and each view can have its own set of filters, etc.

It kinda looked at Jira+Confluence and asked "what's the simplest fundametal software which can be used to build everything they have to offer"

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#438

Post by mmooss »

wuming2 wrote: post #367

The reality is nowadays few documents need desktop publishing features. Because seldom if ever become paper documents. Also the average back office author knows a tiny fraction of Microsoft Word or Excel features. Give them means to type in text, add pictures and collaborate. Templates for beautification. That’s all what is needed. This has been known for ages. Alas Microsoft has a grip on governments and large orgs…

> nowadays few documents need desktop publishing features. Because seldom if ever become paper documents.

I rarely read paper, but I find professionally designed documents much easier to read on my screens. It's such a relief to open a PDF of a professionally designed book, for example, after reading screenfuls of html.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#439

Post by mmooss »

ctrlp wrote: post #203

I just cannot understand the appeal of these browser based note taking apps. Notion, Obsidian, Outline? Is it the collaboration feature? Why not just use Google Docs or equivalent? For notes, I don't see the appeal of having a browser interface. I just put my notes in a text file. No protocol, just search for text strings or text tags. If I need hierarchical organization, I use directories. What am I missing out on?

> I don't see the appeal of having a browser interface. I just put my notes in a text file.

Great until you need an image or more than the simplest table, as examples.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#440

Post by [deleted] »

k__ wrote: post #416
berkes wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> very much one of the most reproducible apps ever. It isn't. The proof is simple: there aren't many reproductions that *tick all the boxes*. And no, "a directory of markdown files" isn't even close, it ticks two, maybe three of the dozens of boxes that notion ticks. Joplin (my daily driver) and obsidian (can't get to like it) are closer, but certainly not there - though these alternatives tick some boxes that notion…

To me, Notion always felt like someone took the concept of a wiki and Jira-fied it. Crazy how such a simple tool can feel so slow and klunky :/

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