As an open source developer for more than 20 years, I agree--using proprietary software that "locks up" your work leaves you somewhat of a hostage to that app.

That's why all of PhotoStructure's metadata changes are stored using EXIF or XMP standards either within the file, or alongside in a sidecar (if you prefer). File organization is also completely customizable, and designed to work in concert with other DAMs, if desired. Details are here: https://photostructure.com/faq/system-of-record/

Also: if the business ends, the code becomes open source. Details here: https://photostructure.com/faq/why-photostructure/#if-photos...

This looks really nice and I think I'll try it soon in my home server. Out of interest, do you have some blog posts on the "how it's made" side of things? I see some toml files for configuration so that would point to core being written in Rust, what else? Thanks!

The frontend is in Vue. Both the FE and BE are in TypeScript.

Parallelism is provided by https://github.com/photostructure/batch-cluster.js/

Metadata reads and writes are via https://github.com/photostructure/exiftool-vendored.js/

Persistence is via SQLite: https://github.com/WiseLibs/better-sqlite3

Image transforms are via Sharp: https://sharp.pixelplumbing.com/

My more nerdier blog posts are tagged here: https://photostructure.com/tags/coding/

Thank you very much for all the links and detailed answer, I wish you all the best with this product and business.

This sounds like something I always wanted. But I can't really figure out if I understand correctly from your website. So could you please clarify: when I edit the keyword of a photo in your software, will this keyword be written back into the EXIF data of the original file? If so, you just got a new paying user.

That's a fair compromise I think. Photostructure does look quite nice, so I'll give it a go.