[sourraspberry]

I've been using this for a couple of years on my home-server.

It's an Obsidian knock-off. It's pretty janky and the documentation is lacking. It's open-source which is nice... But the company behind it is ??? I don't know. They are Chinese but I couldn't find much about them.

I use it because I can self-host it, it has most of the features Obsidian has, and I can use it in a web-browser from anywhere - which is the biggest feature for me that Obsidian lacks.

[phforms]

It seems like they borrowed heavily from Notion, Obsidian and RemNote, as far as I can tell (wouldn’t call it a knock-off though, since there are sooo many apps in this space that you don’t really know who came up with what anymore). But the app doesn’t feel janky to me at first glance, it definitely feels more responsive than Notion and less “slippy” than RemNote. Although it is quite noisy with all the tooltips popping up immediately.

My first impression is that they really wanted to include everything (even RemNote-like spaced-repetition flashcards, Notion-like Databases and of course there has to be AI too) and it seems like they did a pretty decent job at that. I also appreciate that there are so many export options, even for Org-Mode (preserving internal links, images, code-blocks, etc.).

I like that it provides a solid, feature-rich alternative to all the cloud-first, closed-source apps in this space. But it may be too distracting/overwhelming for my use-cases with all the advanced layout capabilities and features though. Tana is a similar all-in-one solution that is really well done (and more innovative than this one), but I always seem to gravitate toward more focussed apps.

[dammaj]

I assume you want to self host in order to sync locally, right? If that's the case, you can use Obsidian with git plugin and you get sync + versioning (all what git offers).

[Terretta]

Which git plugin do you like? And have you used the plugin from more than one machine to a repo more than one machine also syncs with?

[number6]

Sync is premium since some versions. Before it was free, you had only to provide a S3 bucket or a webdav location

[bdhcuidbebe]

I use syncthing to sync my obsidian vault which is also a git repository between linux, mac and windows.

Works great!

[jazzyjackson]

Logseq is floss(gnu license, closurescript) and almost perfect for me but it's totally mysterious to me what's stopping it from serving a web interface that serves files on the web server. It's an electron app with an HTTP API but for some reason the web demo only opens files clientside with filesystem API

Anyway, one of these days I'll fork it and make it work for me. I also have a perverted desire to change the serialization format from markdown to XML so I can manipulate the graph with other tools that talk xpath, xquery, basex.

[grepexdev]

They are doing a rewrite of the app to have a SQLite DB storage for notes instead of markdown files. I think once that is released it will be available in a web browser. Currently in alpha testing, I access the application through the browser.

[rukshn]

I also installed it on my computer to give it a try, but then as you mentioned I could not find who are behind it other than it's based in China. So decided to just keep with Obsidian

[oefrha]

Took me like a minute to find out who are behind it. Committers on GitHub project point to two profiles:

- https://github.com/88250

- https://github.com/Vanessa219

The first profile has a README (zh-CN, easily translated) introducing themselves as a married couple as well as their career trajectory leading to their current company. Googling the company name leads me to https://www.tianyancha.com/company/3153162387 showing the company’s legal structure, the legal names of the couple, their address, etc. (again, zh-CN but easily translated). Looks like I can view their financial reports too if I have a subscription.

The profiles also link to their social media accounts (on their own dev-focused community).

What more is there to know? At least it’s more than the average ShowHN asking for your email and sometimes credit card. I don’t understand these “couldn’t find much about them” claims.

[bflesch]

The link you posted gives me "According to relevant legal regulations, access is temporarily not supported in your current location." and "If your device or the Wi-Fi environment you are in is using a VPN service, please disable it and try again."

I'm not using any VPN. Normal internet from Germany

[TheGeminon]

It is also unavailable from Canada.

[wumeow]

Same in the US.

[pessimizer]

I vaguely recall this being part of a tit-for-tat thing between China and the anti-Chinese. There have been movements to restrict Chinese access to FOSS, because forking FOSS lowers Chinese dependence on the West, along with (ironic) accusations that the "authoritarian" Chinese are limiting access to Western tech products. I thought there was some sort of legislative or judicial outcome that came out of it, but no luck with a quick google.

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U.S. restriction on Chinese use of open-source microchip tech would be hard to enforce - October 13, 2023

> U.S. lawmakers are pressuring the administration of President Joseph Biden to place restrictions on RISC-V to prevent China from benefiting from the technology as it attempts to develop its semiconductor industry.

https://thechinaproject.com/2023/10/13/u-s-bar-on-chinese-us...

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China’s Use of Foreign Open-Source Software, and How to Counter It - April 2, 2024

> Democratic governments also need to reassess which products should not be made open-source because they’re at risk of being weaponized by malign actors.

https://chinaobservers.eu/chinas-use-of-foreign-open-source-...

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Whatever the US did, Europe would do. Anybody in the US or Europe working on a FOSS project with Chinese contributors that they're friendly with? Has anything happened recently?

[Sabinus]

And Australia.

[oefrha]

Okay yeah appears to be heavily geolocked. Still a lot of information otherwise.

[hajimuz]

They open sourced it and you can self hosted. I mean, does it even matter where they are from? Why it’s automatically suspicious when you know the authors are Chinese.

[rukshn]

True the origin does not matter, but it would be better to have more transparency about the contributors even if it's an open source tool. Because you can still get injected with a malicious code when an update is pushed.

But I agree we should not categorize according to geolocation, but more transparency would be better irrespective of the location in any project.

[number6]

It's this D and Vanessa - I think this might be Nicknames. But I don't see how they should be more transparent.

They also have a forum and they answer quite quickly

[v3ss0n]

There is source code. Investigate it, don't be a lazy bum.

[asdf147]

Why are you not using Obsidian itself? Anything wrong with it?

[gbraad]

for web-browser access I host Obsidian with kasmvnc. It is not ideal for use on the phone, but from a tablet it works, and I can host it with Vivaldi in a webpanel for quick edits.