100% this. The reason I started using Obsidian in the first place is that it's built on the exact directory structure and file formats that I was already using to manage my writing and notes, and if Obsidian goes away for some reason, that won't change.

Currently vetting a way to sync my database files with my markdown files on my laptop, so it functions similar to Obsidian. I enjoy Vim too much to work constrained to Directus' markdown editor!

I have dozens of projects from 20 years ago that I can compile today.

I should note that the first program I wrote that was actually used for a purpose (it calculates energy based on an internal stopwatch and then typing in values from a volt and ammeter, for a science project in 1992) still works in qb64 today.

The second program I wrote that was actually used for a purpose assumes a parallel-port printer on DOS that uses a fairly old version of PCL, and was written in 16-bit C, so probably won't work today.

For example, I just took the oldest version of openssl I could find with a quick search (2015, so only 10 years old), and it fails to compile on my Mac. It detects macOS/darwin, and then proceeds to compile for 32-bit Intel, which obviously doesn't work. OpenSSL has fallbacks for straight C implementation to support platforms that haven't been customized, but their build scripts assume that macOS = Intel.

Ok sure, changing the whole freaking CPU architecture will bork a build script. So to prove a point I just downloaded v2.6.11 of the Linux kernel (released in 2005), unpacked (this time on Ubuntu 24.04 on real Intel), and did a `make menuconfig && make`. Of course I don't expect a 20 year old kernel to run on modern hardware, but could I compile it? No, I could not: modern GCC forces PIC by default, which parts of the Linux kernel do not support. I was able to fix that by editing the makefile to pass `-fno-pic` in CFLAGS. Then I get hit with another error due to "multiple definitions" of functions that are declared slightly differently. Turns out old GCC didn't warn about this, but modern GCC handles these declarations differently. This is after pages upon pages of warnings, btw, with only a few source files compiled so far.

I gave up. This is what is meant by archeology required: for anything nontrivial you often have to build the environment in which the code was originally compiled in order to get it to compile again.

Do you remember what the most common processor was in 2005? A Pentium 4, or a Celeron maybe. That was when 64 bit operating systems just became a thing. I’d really like to see you getting a version of, say. OpenSSL from 2005 to compile on modern hardware…

So what? Maybe read the thread that you're responding to.

"And even a 20 year old shell script is probably going to fare pretty poorly."

You can't just say "my sweeping assertion is probably right". I have shell scripts that are more than 20 years old that still run. And I have C89 programs that still compile and run.

"I’d really like to see you getting a version of, say. OpenSSL from 2005 to compile on modern hardware…"

This is a ridiculous disingenuous strawman. I can't get my FORTRAN II programs that I wrote in 1965 to run, but that has nothing to do with the original claim that I responded to, which was a sweeping generalization that a SINGLE counterexample refutes.

Over and out.

I saw that you didn’t want to use a 3rd party provider, but why not stick a git repo on your VPS (which you are trusting with your data today) and use that to coordinate syncs between your client devices?

I expect my PKMS to evolve and wouldn't rule out a self-hosted Git server if I find it's a better option long term.

I don't think you really get it. Git is distributed. There's no need for "a git server". You already have a machine on which you host the SQL database, you can just use that as yet another git remote.

If you’re not trying to coordinate work among multiple people, and aren’t trying to enforce a single source of truth with code, you don’t _need_ “git server” software. You just need a git repository (folder & file structure) in a location that you consider to be your source of truth.

I’m not trying to convince you to change it now, especially if you’re happy with what you have, but I would suggest reading some (or all) of https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2

I think the first ~4 subsections of chapter 4 cover what I & tasuki were suggesting could be sufficient for you. If you’re the type of engineer to read through the code of your data storage layer, I think you’d find Chapter 10 (Git Internals) interesting, because it can demystify git. I enjoyed the whole book.

As with any engineering project, I see lots of questions about your choices, and I applaud you for sticking around. I would make very different decisions than you, based on your stated priorities, but that’s okay.

I learnt this quite late and was not obvious to me so hope it's helpful for you too.

I'd recommend you to look into SyncThing Fork or a similar tool if you never want your notes to leave your own server.

I wrote about ways to sync Obsidian here: https://bryanhogan.com/blog/how-to-sync-obsidian

[0] https://relay.md

I had a very similar thought process about 15 years ago, and went on a quest to write my own notes system - after trying out a lot of ideas and giving up, I washed up in emacs and gave org-mode a try. It's actually good enough, and I can grep through my notes easiy, and sync them with git.

Still far better than a proprietary format.

1. You're relying on the external service to continue providing the export functionality, or else doing regular backups.

2. The format of the exports might be proprietary, so it might be orders of magnitude more difficult to parse.

3. The export might not contain all the data.

4. Even if the export isn't to a proprietary format, it might be to a format that's much harder to parse than Markdown. Markdown is not only a standard, it's fairly readable even without any parsing, as opposed to, say, exporting in HTML. Losing some functionality (often minor, depending on what you use Obsidian for) is better than losing more or all functionality.

2. Or it might be orders of magnitude easier to parse vs replicating all the plugins functionality. You're just arbitrarily making the alternative worse

3. That's again something you've made up that's not a generic feature of alternative proprietary format

4. It might also be export to markdown. Again, unless you make up artificial barriers

But you can also do it the other way, for example, anything non-trivial like some large table with in-cell formatting won't be readable in your primitive plain text-based proprietary format, so it will be much worse that the unreadable Excel xml or its binary alternative, but that would still be a much preferable export format since no, you're not going to develop a new spreadsheet parser that some obsidian plugin uses to make sense of it

> it's fairly readable even without any parsing, as opposed to, say, exporting in HTML.

that's true for primitive formatting needs, but in this case there are tools that can convert html to markdown that would easily do that

That's not necessarily true. Some apps keep only cached copies of the data and the rest on the cloud. Sometimes the local files are in a binary format that is unreadable without the export functionality, and newer releases of certain apps remove the export functionality.

> 2. Or it might be orders of magnitude easier to parse vs replicating all the plugins functionality. You're just arbitrarily making the alternative worse

Obviously this depends on the exact app.

But I don't think you can credibly claim that a textual format like markdown isn't easier to parse than... well, almost any other format.

> 3. That's again something you've made up that's not a generic feature of alternative proprietary format

I didn't make it up. It depends on the alternative app you're talking about. Some export full data including all metadata, some don't include all metadata, etc.

My point is that if all the data is actually just markdown files on your computer, there is no question of whether you have all the data.

> 4. It might also be export to markdown. Again, unless you make up artificial barriers

Once again, depends on the specific app. I was a long-term user of Evernote, and still have a subscription. I just checked, and it looks like you can export to a format called "enex", or to a single html page, or to pdf. That's awesome! And the chance that you won't be able to use this in another app is next to nothing, since everyone works to be able to import Evernote.

It's still a tradeoff between the extra functionality you get from Evernote, vs. the simplicity of the "export" files you have. In Obsidian, there's no separate export, the files are stored in simple-to-read Markdown. But you get less functionality.

It's a tradeoff. I'm not saying one is better than the other. But pretending there isn't a tradeoff is quite simply wrong.

> But you can also do it the other way, for example, anything non-trivial like some large table with in-cell formatting won't be readable in your primitive plain text-based proprietary format, so it will be much worse that the unreadable Excel xml or its binary alternative, but that would still be a much preferable export format since no, you're not going to develop a new spreadsheet parser that some obsidian plugin uses to make sense of it

Yes. I wouldn't use Obsidian to do anything that would require a spreadsheet. I'd simply use Excel, since it's a billion times better at it.

I'm certainly not against using the right tool for the job, nor am I against proprietary formats in general.

> and newer releases of certain apps remove the export functionality.

Then you'd just use the old release with the export functionality intact. You can also make up stuff like "Obsidian can release an app that deletes/encrypts all local files, retaining only the cloud copy, and start charging for it without having any export functionality"

> But I don't think you can credibly claim that a textual format like markdown isn't easier to parse than... well, almost any other format.

This isn't markdown, but markdown + dozens of extensions, so it's very easy to claim that it's much harder to write custom parsers for dozens of formats rather than use an existing parser for some more elaborate format that doesn't need those extensions.

> the files are stored in simple-to-read Markdown

they aren't, they're stored in an undefined format depending on which extensions you use. Part of it is markdown (which is not simple to read in the non-primitive case of richly formatted docs)

> there's no separate export

That's not a benefit! It means that you can't move outside of the Obsidian ecosystem because there is no well-defined format that you could use another app with! So it's (practically) even worse than Evernote since that one is already widely supported, though theoretically it's the same.

> But pretending there isn't a tradeoff is quite simply wrong.

Yet you've failed to identify it, turns out it all "depends on the specific app"! Fine, compare apps, but the general argument was about text-based proprietary format with a chance of data loss if the ecosystem dies (or a chance of requiring a lot of effort to convert), and a generic proprietary format that can be exported into a text-based format... with the same risks!

> This isn't markdown, but markdown + dozens of extensions,

Yes, if the way you use Obsidian includes dozens of extensions that each use a proprietary format, then it's similar to just using Evernote in many ways.

If you're mostly using plain markdown with only a few custom formats, then it's still easier.

If today, right now, Obsidian stopped working, I could literally open my Obsidian folder in VSCode and still be able to do 90% of the things that I do in Obsidian.

If today, right now, Evernote stopped working, it would take some effort to find a working version, export the files, convert them to markdown or whatever, etc.

I just don't know how you can claim that Obsidian is more effort to use outside of Obsidian than something proprietary.

No, at your accepted level of the loss of functionality that would be trivial.

  - Launch the app you already have, export
  - Launch another app, import. Could be Obsidian. Here is their guide. https://help.obsidian.md/import/evernote
  - Open results in VSCode and ignore the 10% lost in conversion

Because at every step you trivialize one option and complicate the other. While they're generically equivalent. All the same things apply...

> If you're mostly using plain

If you're mostly using plain notes in Evernote, then your conversion to the same plain markdown will be trivial, so using another plain markdown isn't easier

Fast-forward a year, and all your vault structure implicitly relies on the quirks of Obsidian search behavior, the markdown you write is extremely obsidian-flavored markdown, and you don't even remember how to write LaTeX without LaTeX-Suite shortcuts.

And I'm pretty sure both will be forked and modified to run independently of Obsidian within a week of the theoretical enshittification.

I wouldn't so I keep to markdown and minimize plugins where aplicable, if I need to run for the hills, I don't expect to lose much

Even simpler, I have mine in a Dropbox folder. Felt very strange for _this_ to be the straw that broke the camel's back for the author.

Nonetheless, very glad for them that they enjoyed and learned from the experience of building a replacement!

Deal breaker for me - adding iconography to file and folder names can be a natural, zesty enterprise.

I’m pretty sure author just wanted to build PKMS. These types of “oooh, will it be there in 20 years” are standard OCD/procrastination.

Also, Obsidian supports free iCloud sync if you are a Mac and iOS user. I know that's only a subset of users, but a nice option to get Obsidian to sync on the phone if you are in the Apple ecosystem.

Also, they have a cheaper Sync plan now that is $4 per month.

I can't really be bothered that Sync would cost up to 1000 in ten years. If you use Obsidian daily, it had an immensive value and it's cheaper than most services out there.

Also agree with the sibling poster - I like subscribing to support them on a regular basis (and of course Catalyst).

In addition, the Git plugin, coupled with Working Copy on my iPhone and iPad, also work extremely well, with a bit of added overhead. Though iCloud works reasonably well for just about everything else, I haven't used it for syncing Obsidian data.

handles syncing my pictures too

Syncthing's .apk release files can be found here: https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android/releases

edit note, if you want to build something :) please expand livesync or a new plugin to allow easily sharing of self hosted obsidian notes :) All the ones I tried use some 3rd party hosting which I don't like even if its encrypted.

the cheap sync plan is a scam though, it doesn't do enough to be even worth bothering with iirc

The tradeoff doesn't make sense otherwise. If you're poor, then you wouldn't have the luxury of the available time to write your own PKM - the opportunity cost is huge, it's massively preferential to use an existing free solution that is "good enough" (Obsidian without sync or using your own sync solution, Dendron, Roam, Org). If you're not poor, then $9/month is a rounding error, especially compared to the value provided.

Not really.. This problem runs far deeper than most are willing to see. First, Obsidian is using a personalized flavour of markdown, and seconds, for many heavy features it's leaning strongly on plugins which are prone to break or even die. Obsidian has a vibrant plugin-community, which also seems to die really fast. This becomes even more critical by plugins dying from changes in Obsidian itself. So while Obsidian is in theory a nice open app, it's longevity-aspect is really awful. I already had many features and plugins dying in the last years, and who know how much more will break in the next 20 years. Simply switching to another text-editor will not do, because they won't offer the missing features. So at best, you are just not losing your data, but you still won't have the tooling to use them.

Someone creating their own system, where they have full control over everything, even if they will have to sacrifice some benefit in the short run, just makes sense in a bigger picture.

The plugins sit in a local directory. Very easy to modify.

You still have no control over obsidian itself. Any change can and will break plugins. So you either settle with one version for the next decade, or you have to maintain them. This is just the normal dependency-hell that every project has, where you have to compromise with external dependency and their whims. Just that neither plugins nor obsidian (to some degree) are the level of professional software-projects in that regard.

And let's not talk about changing Obsidian on fundamental levels. You have even less control on how it works on everything which is not accessible by plugins.

I could see the dataview plugin as an example (even though I don't use that one personally) but most other plugins seem like they just add more convenient ways to do something that would be still pretty simple to do manually. (Templates for example).

Depends on what you are doing. But the whole task & project-management-corner is constantly moving. Everything which modified the editor and preview was also regular breaking in the last years. For example, there were some plugins adding banners at the top of documents, or background-images or some icons. Or plugins modifying the yaml-area. They were all breaking multiple times when Obsidian was switching to the new live-preview-editor, then on changing frontmatter to properties, and on some other occasion IIRC. Usually after some months a new plugin appears, or someone forks the old one and fixes it. But as a user, it's pretty annoying to constantly have something breaking outside your control and getting stripped of features you want/need for various reasons.

Obsidian is useful, but far from being stable long-term yet. It's still very young.

> I could see the dataview plugin as an example

Yes, dataview was also very unstable the first 2 years or so, switching code and concepts, breaking old code along the line. It seems to be stable now, as the focus is on datacore.

> but most other plugins seem like they just add more convenient ways to do something that would be still pretty simple to do manually. (Templates for example).

Does it matter what a plugin is doing? If it breaks, it's a loss, whether it's crucial or just annoying.

To me, the "dialects" of Markdown have never made any difference in using it, even between applications. I think the only non-standard (for whatever "standard" means in Markdown) markup I use in Obsidian is "%%" to indicate comments. That's certainly something easy enough to search for should it be necessary in a text editor.

But mostly I don't. My work notes are on my work laptop and my personal notes are on my PC. I might copy them onto a mobile device if I'm traveling, but I might not bother. Mobile devices don't have the good keyboard and large screen to really be useful for stuff like that. But I have copied them over before just in case I wanted to find something in them.