Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by helloguillecl on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @12:01PM (#26317431)

This is amazing. I like Roam Research but I refuse to give full control of something so important to any third party. At this point we have all experienced what it is like to give the control over your digital life to FAANG-like entities with priorities other than their own users well-being. We can and should ask for better.

If it will be my second brain (please note how important this sounds), what I want is to be able to be in full control of the data I generated with it.

I'd happily pay for an Open Source SaaS service from which I can download my data and use it in my own computer/server if I wish to do so, much like Sentry or Strapi.

Edit: Clarity, grammar and spelling

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by dageshi on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @05:19AM (#26326662)

You can export everything from roam in json or markup... does that basically not suffice?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by randomchars on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @05:31AM (#26326724)

Have you actually looked at what's exported? You need to do a lot of parsing, and modifying before that content is usable...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by Grustaf on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @08:21AM (#26327920)

Someone could write a viewer, or converter for this format? Should be simpler than writing a new creation app.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by randomchars on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @10:59AM (#26330096)

You could, but why? I wrote a small package to automate my backups, and transform the content into something readable for myself. It's far from feature complete, even for my simple personal use.

But if you're doing a complete read-only copy of roam, why not go all the way and make it editable, and compete with them instead?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by Grustaf on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @12:08PM (#26331297)

If, like OP, you are concerned about the closed nature of Roam, you could make that converter instead of a replacement for Roam.

You could say openness is “a feature, not a product”, and it’s a feature that could be retrofitted.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by randomchars on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @12:58PM (#26332066)

You could, yeah.

You could put in a lot of work, just for read-only feature parity.

Or you could work some more, and have a competing product.

You seem adamant, that the former is a better path, but I don't quite see why would you do all that work for naught.

(Roam already broke my backup script 2 times, and there are better uses of my time than interfacing with a proprietary product, if there are better alternatives.)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by Grustaf on Thursday March 04, 2021 @06:29AM (#26341125)

I'd say a parser is an order of magnitude less work, but if someone wants to make a full product I'm not going to try to stop them.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by dageshi on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @12:04PM (#26331239)

That's fine. I'm quite happy with roam, I have the exports if I ever need them.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by randomchars on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @01:24PM (#26332411)

> I have the exports if I ever need them.

Do yourself a favor and check if the exports actually have what you need, before blindly trusting it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by helloguillecl on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @06:30AM (#26327060)

That's as useful as exporting your excel sheets into CSV or exporting your Google takeout backup. Yes you have your data, but can you do anything useful and continue working with it without a big deal of effort? I'd also like to continue working in the same learned workflow/method after I take my data.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by dageshi on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @12:07PM (#26331275)

I don't particularly want to spend ages trying to find "perfect" when roam is "good" enough. The chances of roam disappearing over night are pretty slim and I take weekly backups of my data from them. Worst comes to the worst I'll dump it into a directory and grep for what I'm looking for.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by randomchars on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @06:57AM (#26327254)

One more point: the exported data in markdown (and maybe in json too) is lossy. It's not just that the you can't use it out of the box, but that significant parts of it are missing as well.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by Graziano_M on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @01:27PM (#26318570)

Roam has plans for offline-only storage.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by lrae on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @02:30PM (#26319358)

Is that out of beta and working now? Also is it still only available in the $500 (?) dollar plan or what ever it was?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by Graziano_M on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @03:03PM (#26319837)

Nope and yes!

I am just pointing out that closed source doesn't necessarily mean 'not in control of your data'.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Re... by lrae on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @03:17PM (#26320026)

True. And too bad, would give it a try again otherwise.

[ Parent | on HN ]