If they go out due to bankruptcy/liquidation, the b'y trustee can "avoid" what(ever few) privacy and IP ownership protections that my exist in the Evernote EULA and sell all of your data AND identity to data brokers... after all what's more important than making the creditors whole?!?
Is that really the case? Would liquidation take priority over contracts (EULAs in this case) -- I wonder what happened when St. Vincent's Hospital went bankrupt...were all the medical records sold off to the highest bidder(I dont remember hearing about that?)
Is anyone aware of any good open alternatives to Evernote? I've been reluctant to try Evernote for that particular reason (and lock-in factors). Ideally something like: 1) open source format; 2) you host the files e.g. on Dropbox; 3) markdown; 4) searchable (and entries can be tagged). Happy to pay for the app but the files need to be self-hosted in an open format.
This was discussed on HN previously, with no GREAT alternatives, but a few workable alternatives[1]
I'm actively looking for a replacement. I have tried Paperwork[2], Laverna[3], and DevonThink[4]
If you're on OSX, and open to a fair amount of upfront work, DevonThink is the best alternative I've used, and can sync with webDAV against Owncloud-or-other-DAV-server for multi-client-access.
That said, I've not yet found anything that approaches the overall feature set of Evernote across OSX+iOS, and continue to use it daily. I wish they would just let us host our notebooks on our own datastores.
OneNote for Windows (not open format, but can export into open format. Avoid saving notebooks to OneDrive, save them to local disk storage. OneNote for other platforms does not support local storage at all)
You've described a git repository containing folders of markdown files. The "app" would be a git client and a markdown editor, both of which are available on all mobile platforms.
I use pocket git and IA writer on Android. It's a great combo!
FFS Microsoft, let me pin my notebooks on the lefthand side of onenote for mac. The navigation when you have lots and lots of sections is horrendous. ESPECIALLY when you can't sort by name from the mac client. Regardless, scrolling left to right isn't natural with a keyboard and mouse when you've got literally hundreds of sections like I do (one per client).
I loved Evernote. With Libin leaving, it seemed like writing on the wall. I migrated everything to Google Drive while I plan my migration to DEVONthink.
if you're seriously concerned about this, then the answer is to backup your notes periodically. There are a number of ways to do this - the one I use involves installing Evernote locally and then periodically exporting the database into Dropbox. Of course, this doesn't guarantee that your notes won't fall into the wrong hands. To avoid that you'd need to either encrypt your notes or run something yourself.
What usually happens in cases like these is that you get to download all of your notes in some format. This is what happened when google wave was taken down.
Google shuttering a product is a bit of a different thing than a company going out of business. It's a different pool of people in a different position dealing with different issues. I'd like to think they would do the same (right) thing, but I think that's a risky bet.