[tombert]

Have Obsidian stopped requiring that you pay for a commercial license to use for work? I know it wasn't enforced but I think the free license limited you to personal use.

I bought a commercial license three years ago, and I don't really mind paying it, but then my job for the last year expressly forbid the use of Obsidian [1], and as such I didn't feel compelled to keep paying, though I still used it for personal stuff.

I looked at their website and it looks like the commercial license is optional now?

I don't really mind paying for it, I think it's a pretty decent notes app and I probably get more than $50/year of value out of it.

[1] I'm not 100% sure why, I think it might have been because the people doing the approvals thought that the Sync was an intrinsic to the app and they were afraid of company secrets going out.

[dragonwriter]

> Have Obsidian stopped requiring that you pay for a commercial license to use for work?

I don't know if they ever required that, but they certainly do not now. They encourage purchase of a commercial license, but it explicitly is not required.

From the FAQ on their pricing page:

Do I have to pay for commercial use?

No. You are not required to pay for a commercial license, however if you are using Obsidian for work in an organization we encourage you to purchase a commercial license to keep Obsidian independent and 100% user-supported.

[j_4]

Yes.

https://obsidian.md/blog/free-for-work/

[kwanbix]

I don't get it. The pricing page only lists paid options. Not a free tier. What am I missing here?

[Saris]

There are no tiers or different features, just their own sync service is a paid service, and the commercial license is paid but optional.

Otherwise the free Obsidian has everything, and there are other plugins for self hosted syncing that don't use the paid service.

[kwanbix]

but without syncing is basically unusable, or can I access my texts from my pc and my cell for example?

[Oranguru]

You can absolutely sync your vault without a paid subscription. Simply save it within your OneDrive or Google Drive folder. Alternatively, you could use Syncthing if you prefer a self-hosted solution.

[theshrike79]

You can, but _you_ need to figure out how to do it.

If don't know how or can't be bothered, you can pay for Obsidian Sync - which Just Works.

I tried to roll my own syncing with syncthing and iCloud and Dropbox. In the end I spent so much time debugging and dealing with files clobbering each other mid-sync I figured out $4/month to support a project I use daily isn't too much.

Zero problems since and I use Obsidian regularly on 4 different devices.

[Saris]

Plenty of other sync options in the plugins if you didn't see the last part of my comment, or you can just sync the Obsidian directory with Syncthing.

[kwanbix]

Thanks, I misread what you said about the plugins. Will take a look then. thanks.

[GlitchRider47]

I wouldn't say it is unusable lol. Many people don't need to sync. My work notes for example stay on my work computer.

For those that want to sync without paying, many use syncthing, though I don't think this is a feasible workaround for iOS users.

There are some other syncing methods that I haven't really looked into.

[themadturk]

Seconding this. I use Obsidian and Obsidian Sync for personal stuff, but my employer doesn't allow Sync, so I use Obsidian very happily as a standalone on my work computer. The work vault simply never gets exposed to the outside world (we don't allow USB memory devices either).

[ie21]

I have my obsidian vault saved in local Google Drive folder. Saved changes are synced with Google Drive windows app.

I use DriveSync on Android to sync selected Gdrive folder to my phone.

It works.

[tombert]

Ah, fair enough. That's actually fairly recent.