Check if makrdown formatting functionality is enough for you or not - it is pretty limited.

Do not forget to purchase proper obsidian license - your usecase is not covered by a free version.

Do not forget to purchase proper obsidian license - your usecase is not covered by a free version.

Can you elaborate on this? Are you referencing their "Publish" feature?

No. I mean the following: “Commercial Use Licenses are required whenever Obsidian is being used for work for a business with two or more personnel. Sole proprietorships or other one-person organizations do not require a Commercial Use License. Work for educational purposes does not require a Commercial Use License.

Commercial Use Licenses must be purchased on an annual and per user basis. Commercial users must purchase at least as many licenses as the number of people who will be using Obsidian.

You may use Obsidian commercially for free for 14 days to evaluate the app before purchase.”

see: obsidian.md/license

Hm. I keep notes in Obsidian, including work notes. I wonder if that violates the license. I might abandon Obsidian over this.

including work notes This requires a commercial license. If your work does not meet few exceptions mentioned in the text I quoted above.

It's bad news for Obsidian, not me. There's a million note taking applications out there.

This depends on what do you need form a note taking app. But if your needs are covered by many - great you have a big list to choose from.

Man, now I have to go from championing Obsidian to warning people away from it. That sucks.

Man, now I have to go from championing Obsidian to warning people away from it. That sucks.

What are you talking about?! How is commercial licensing of an indie product something to warn people about? Maybe start by warning people of Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, SAP, because their licensing models are horrendously exploitive.

You are just frustrated that your entitlement for a free product was not satisfied. Your reaction to vent against Obsidian and by that its Dev Team is bizarre.

Because my work notes are personal as far as I'm concerned. If my employer was telling everyone to use Obsidian that would be a different story. Their scope is too wide, and yes, it's frustrating. Not to mention, the core obsidian application is lackluster at best; it's the plugins that really make it stand out. How much of the money goes to plugin creators?

Just scummy all around.

I would like to write an Operation Manual for municipality’s water system. There will be embedded screenshots and some links to other sections of the document.

Ideally we could “publish” to offline html. The customer would also like a printed manual.

This is not personal use. This is commercial use.

If my employer was telling everyone to use Obsidian that would be a different story

In that case your employer would need to provide you with a license.

Not to mention, the core obsidian application is lackluster at best; it’s the plugins that really make it stand out.

If Obsidian is lackluster, then why complain even complain about its licensing model. Just move on to another programm.

How much of the money goes to plugin creators?

I don’t know and I don’t think it matters. Plugin creators frequently provide donation methods on their sites. I also don’t believe that Obsidian is as profitable as you might think. I don’t think the income generated through licensing covers what the Dev team actually puts in in terms of work, although I don’t have any figures on that.

This is also a poor attempt at moving the goal post. You just realized that you are not behaving ethically… and instead of sucking up to it and either paying 50$/year for a commercial license or moving on to another product (which most definitely has a licensing model as well) you are hating on an indie software dev team. Go and play with OneNote.

I am not the person writing a manual. Reading comprehension is key to having an intelligent discussion about any topic via text. Please pay attention.

Obsidian says that if I take my own personal meeting notes in Obsidian, that magically makes it commercial use. That is what I'm complaining about.

I explained why I chose Obsidian. I promise you very few people would use it without plugins. It's not terrible or anything, but just lackluster. Without plugins it becomes far less useful. If tomorrow they said they were removing the ability to use plugins, would you continue to use Obsidian without them? I doubt it.

It does matter because you made it about devs "needing" compensation. If you believe that, then it should translate to the people actually making Obsidian stand out: the plugin creators. No?

You have no idea what moving the goalposts means. I am just extrapolating from your own stance. I already said I'm abandoning Obsidian. You seemed to think that was crazy, but also don't seem to understand why Obsidian is hurt more by this decision than I am.