If it dies I’ll still have all of my content in easily portable markdown though.

Exactly this. I don’t really care if google drive or Dropbox is closed source. Why would I? I’ll just use syncthing (open sourced alternative) if shit hits the fan. Let them earn their money by providing bandwidth, safe storage and file versioning.

And especially awesome is that all their enhancements like properties and daily notes make use of markdown or json rather than closed binary/hard to reverse xml formats. Any app could replicate the functionality if it wanted to and it would be portable next minute. The only thing that is kind of locked is the plugin but that’s outside of scope.

Under capitalism, it's reasonable to charge for products and services.

The jury is still out on "companies like Bitwarden, Gitlab, and New Vector". Kudos to them for pioneering novel business models.

Interesting. In regards to your first point, do you have justification to back your claim? I’d be interested in reading more, or perhaps seeing an example?

I'd hardly say the jury is still out - Bitwarden has been around for 7 years, GitLab for 9, and New Vector for 6. Granted, they may not have reached the level of success that some software companies have, and they certainly could still fail, but 6-9 years of operation with a foreseeable future of success in the technology world seems like a pretty successful business to me.

The kind of comment really, really rubs me the wrong way.

Your data isn't locked up in a format. Just use logseq or something if obsidian disappears.

Those who write the code have the right to control its source code. They aren't "inhumane" or thinking "short-term" just because its not open source.

Well, I would agree that "humane" is a poor term to use when describing software in general, but especially for open vs. closed source. I also realize that my comment was a bit harsh on Obsidian. I think they have a fine thing going (although I personally don't need note taking software like that); I just would love to see more and more software become open source and I think this would be a prime candidate for open sourcing.

There are plenty open source md note taking apps you can chose from. I don’t see why the tantrum for a tool you don’t even use. Are you doing a guilt trip for every closed source app shown here?