self-hosting would be what's important for me as well; mostly because I don't trust my data / notes being hosted by someone else. I currently use Logseq without syncing.
They aren't pestering the developers; they made a comment on HN about what, to them, is an essential feature of a note-taking app. The developers may never see it.
I happen to agree with them. The single most important aspect of a note-taking app is that I must own my notes. That means that I must be able to take them elsewhere if I want. Including, in fact, especially, if the company hosting
them goes out of business or simply chooses to discontinue the app (looking at you, Google).
If I can take the plain text but lose the formatting or the cross-linking, that isn't good enough (hello Google Keep export).
But if lowercase can find enough customers who don't feel this way, all power to them.
What note-taking app are you using currently, if any?
I've been using Silverbullet [1] for a while now and love it due to it's usage of plain-text markdown files in a normal directory structure to actually store the notes. Yet, it supports many other features such as query language and to a certain extent, federation with other SilverBullet instances. The only major downside for me is that whilst it's usable on mobile, it feels cramped.
Open-sourcing the code allows some level of assurance that your data is not being used for profit and that if the hosted version goes away, it can still be used as a self-hosted service.
In addition, it can allow the devs to accept contributions, making their job maintaining the program easier.