The plan for Obsidian is to never grow beyond 10-12 people, never take VC funding, never collect personal data or analytics.
Continue building with the assumption that software is ephemeral, files matter more than apps. Use formats that are open and durable.
See our manifesto:
https://obsidian.md/about
From a traditional business perspective the Obsidian approach has many downsides:
we can only focus on 1-2 things at a time, we can't build lots of stuff in parallel like a bigger company can
we have to cover our costs, we can't subsidize pricing — charging a fair price is a disadvantage in the market
we have no lock-in, our users can leave at any time easily
we have less freedom to build fancy features that rely on unencrypted private data (like cloud-based AI) or more sophisticated non-portable data formats
we have limited metrics to inform product decisions, we have to learn directly from what users say
users have the freedom to significantly modify the app via plugins, more things can go wrong or feel less cohesive
... I would not recommend this approach to every business, but these are the tradeoffs we choose knowingly.
A principle is only useful if you can legitimately take the opposite side.
Otherwise it's simply an aspiration that everyone else is also shooting for.
@kepano Well, at least I appreciate it. And I try to spread the word where I can. 😃
I got the insider access to financially support you folks. Have you thought about the case where people don't need the monthly services, but would like to toss some money your way to ensure you folks can keep working on it? I doubt your organisational status allows donations, right?
@kepano I profoundly appreciate the "future-proof" focus—it's part of why I pay for Sync!
So I hope the #Obsidian team realizes the current mouse-dependent editing & reading views aren't future-proof. They're an inaccessible form of interface lock-in.
You have recently done a great job of making Obsidian Publish sites more #accessible. Please bring that same principle to all aspects of the editor itself.
Every element (collapsible headings, tasks in queries, list items, etc) that can be interacted with via mouse needs an built-in, equivalent keyboard interaction.
Because these are your core principles, keyboard #accessibility should be a core behavior, not outsourced to a community plug-in that will eventually stop being maintained.
Here are some key resources for keyboard accessibility:
- https://www.w3.org/WAI/perspective-videos/keyboard/
- https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/Understanding_WCAG/Keyboard#interactive_elements_must_be_able_to_be_activated_using_a_keyboard
- https://webaim.org/techniques/keyboard/
Here's proof other editors make it work:
- TinyMCE: https://www.tiny.cloud/docs/tinymce/6/keyboard-shortcuts/
- VSCode: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/accessibility#_keyboard-navigation
@kepano I'm thrilled to hear it's a top priority!
In Reading (not Editing) view, what are the keyboard shortcuts for navigating to a Tasks query and checking off a task, or navigating to and collapsing a heading? (I'm on Mac.)
I've trawled the Help site ( https://help.obsidian.md/Home ), searched the Forums, and asked in Discord, and haven't found a way to do it.
> we have limited metrics to inform product decisions, we have to learn directly from what users say
I don't fundamentally object to the idea of anonymized telemetry helping to improve a product, but I suspect such data is often used mainly to figure out how to extract more money from me.
> we have limited metrics to inform product decisions, we have to learn directly from what users say
Obsidian seems like a case study on how collecting & acting on feedback from a passionate user base grows enthusiasm, loyalty, and evangelism.
That all means not too much as long as the code is not free software.
@nik Why? The files are yours and in free and open formats. For a notetaking app the file over app philosophy is much more important than free code
https://stephanango.com/file-over-app
Don't get me wrong, I love open source deeply. I have built and contributed to many FOSS projects:
https://stephanango.com/projects
However, if you are trying to sustain a project for the long term it needs a way of paying people. I have never been able to pay my bills from FOSS, though that could be due to my own lack of creativity.
No. No, I don't agree it doesn't matter what the app does with my nicely open-formatted notes. Whether their telemetry or whatever leaks my private notes is not a matter of file format.
I can't speak for you, but my own pure open source (and free software) work pays my bills and that of three employees who themselves work on FOSS projects that don't contribute to our income themselves.
@BartWronski @kepano good to know! I tried it quite some time ago and I think I liked it, but as I was/am using VS Code for editing all my Markdown files, I was not sure I was getting enough added value from Obsidian to switch to it...
But I should probably give it another try!
@BartWronski @kepano oh, yeah, actually, It was very similar for me... I think I looked at it because several years ago (and sometimes it comes back from time to time) I was reading lots of graphics, compiler papers (PDF) and articles on the web, and I'm trying to have notes on the sides, but I have always been looking to organize all my knowledge searching/collecting/notes in a unified way.
I thought Obsidian could help, but maybe I missed some features... but I should definitely try again.
@kepano I appreciate that you use open formats.
I know Obsidian supports a few useful, non-standard additions to markdown, such as callouts and embeds. It would be helpful if there was explicit documentation for these syntaxes. That would aide in interoperability with other apps and formats.
If I remember correctly, Obsidian uses markdown-it internally, so if you linked to a plugin, that would be even more helpful.
@binyamin Here's the documentation on that topic
https://help.obsidian.md/Editing+and+formatting/Obsidian+Flavored+Markdown
I admit it could be a bit more detailed, will polish that up
🙏 Please add an image description to each of the two images in your post about the manifesto.
I would like to boost it, but I cannot do so:
If there is no alt-text linked to the image people who use a #ScreenReader will only hear one frustrating word:
"image"
#InclusionMatters and it's not just a »nice to have« but an expression of our fairness to other people.
THX a lot. :) 👍
@kepano Love more "startups" being more customer-first (not investor-first) and self sustainable.
I have worked with VC funded startups before, they're great, can move super fast. But from an user's perspective the uncertainty of the company's and the product's future. Because VC funded startups goal is to make as much money for the VC fund (-> investors), they need to aim really high and take a lot of risks, leading to a high fail rate. Not particularly to create a great product for the users that they can rely for long.
For this reason I wouldn't personally want to go with a VC funded startup for a core/must-have important services like email, drive, documents, etc.
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