I have an issue with Obsisian bc it’s freemium. From what I could tell, there’s not a substantial difference from Joplin, which is FOSS.

How is it freemium? You either pay them to “host” your files or you don’t. There is no other cost involved. IIRC, Joplin Cloud is a similar set up if you’re not equipped to selfhost or just don’t want to. It’s not FOSS, sure. But it’s a hierarchy of flat markdown files that can be read by any text editor on any OS. Making extracting your data very simple. Joplin stores your notes in a database file that requires an export or conversion function to get it back out, should they go out of business, etc. The database and the absolutely horrible Android app is what had me give up on Joplin entirely. If it’s working for you thats great. I’m certainly not trying to convince anyone. My use case requires easy, universal access to my notes. And .md files in folders is the lowest friction way I can think of. I’m currently paying for Sync, but once my year is up I’m going to try Syncthing again or the CouchDB sync plugin to save money. $8/mo is too much.

How is it freemium?

It doesn’t cost money unless you want certain features, and it uses a proprietary license.

You either pay them to “host” your files or you don’t… It’s not FOSS, sure.

And that’s a dealbreaker for me (the non-FOSS license, not the “pay the devs” part)

I guess my point is that in your example, Joplin is the same. The feature hidden behind a paywall is for them to host the sync function for you. Both Joplin and Obsidian offer that. Yet you can roll your own method using Syncthing, Nextcloud, etc for either of them. If it’s FOSS or not that’s a deal breaker, I get it. I gave Obsidian a pass in that regard since the file format is so wide open and universal.

You may want to keep an eye out on these two as well. Both are missing some features now, but have them on their roadmap:

Acreom

  • not open source yet, but planned
  • no E2EE, but planned
  • can’t self host the mobile app side of things, but the desktop versions work without an account and use markdown file format like Obsidian (and others)

Notesnook

  • Open source
  • E2EE
  • Can’t self host yet, but on the roadmap. The dev confirmed to me that there would be no fee tacked on for self hosters once released, something that either Standard Notes or Simple Note does (can’t remember which).
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