4 ms·

This looks like it has great potential, but what I really want is an open source "notion" with a well considered plugin & schema model. I desperately want to sy

by xanth 10mo ago

This looks like it has great potential, but what I really want is an open source "notion" with a well considered plugin & schema model. I desperately want to sync back all my data into a single cohesive graph; notes, reading list, messages, exercise activity in a more compute friendly format than MD files.

bakli 10mo ago
Like Obsidian?
- shmoogy 10mo ago
  Obsidian isn't open source
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - echelon 10mo ago
    I'm still happy to use it. It's not like they can rug pull on the data or even the existing app binaries. I'd really like to see the team get rewarded for their work, too. I'd be sad if it went 100% open and they didn't so much as draw a market salary from it. I think if it went open, they'd get nothing. That's the one thing I strongly dislike about open source is that only hyperscalers really economically benefit from it. They've done a remarkable service for all of us.
    - alabhyajindal 10mo ago
      I used to be very against closed source products but changed my mind recently. One of the founders of Obsidian makes some great points here: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/open-sourcing-of-obsidian/1515/11 https://forum.obsidian.md/t/open-sourcing-of-obsidian/1515/1...
      - echelon 10mo ago
        This is a great rebuttal. 99.9% of the internet is closed source and we don't ask for it to be opened. From our ISPs, to Google, to the hyperscalers. If anything, I think we should be asking those things to be open. If we're only asking the little guys, the big guys with trillion dollar market caps skate by. This is exactly how they want it. Fewer gradients for small players to grow.
        hexo 10mo ago
        I do ask for that and generally refuse to use closed source sw. But... something being opensource doesnt always mean you can change stuff. Like signal-desktop that has build process so badly convoluted that even gentoo doesnt build it itself. (has it improved already?)
        echelon 10mo ago
        Two things: 1) Modern 2010s era "OSI Approved open source" is a meme built by hyperscalers to get free work, poach the efforts of others (Amazon makes hundreds of millions on Redis, Elasticsearch, etc.) and eliminate the threat of smaller players. There are great things like Linux and Blender and ffmpeg. But there is also a concerted battle waged by trillion dollar companies against us using "open" to salt the field of any kind of economic growth salient. By being completely open and not keeping some leverage, you ensure you cannot make the same revenues the big companies can. And they will outspend and outgrow you. They will encircle and even find a way to grow off of your labor while you don't see so much as a dime. 2) You wouldn't be on the internet right now if you really refused to use closed source. The binary blobs in your hardware, your ISP, your wifi. Not even Stallman can do it. I love open source. But I hate how difficult it is to make money. And I hate how the big players have used it to enrich and entrench themselves by making it just the crust of their closed source empires.
      - stronglikedan 10mo ago
        > The cost to benefit ratio is very low for our small team of 2, and our plate is already full. Wow, I didn't know the team was so small - go them!
    - braza 10mo ago
      > It's not like they can rug pull on the data or even the existing app binaries. This. I spend 6 months to export 100K notes from Evernote mostly because they intentionally throttle the exports to a limit and you can extract it only in their proprietary format that truncates some data.
- Kye 10mo ago
  I was surprised at how similar Trilium looks to Obsidian when it was suggested in a thread somewhere: https://triliumnotes.org/ https://triliumnotes.org/ It's open source and as far as I can tell uses a database.
gman83 10mo ago
AppFlowy ?
- blubber 10mo ago
  Isn't really (ie fully) open source, is it?
kgarten 10mo ago
Logseq? (Though it uses md)
neodymiumphish 10mo ago
It's definitely a work in progress, but AnyType has a lot of functionality similar to Notion. I haven't used it in a while, so I don't know whether there are plugins in any meaningful capacity. From past experience, it's even pretty simple to host your own sync server to get away from their account/storage limits.
- notachatbot123 10mo ago
  AnyType is not open-source.
  - neodymiumphish 10mo ago
    Fair enough, it's protocol is open source and the apps are source available. Modifications can be made by individuals for their own uses, though. I think it's as close as you can expect to get with a mostly full-fledged Notion competitor. In any case, I don't particularly enjoy AnyType, despite coming back to it a few times to test it out (and still maintaining my own sync server, despite not actively using it, in case I go back to try it out again after some demonstrably updates). Just pointing out that it's a less restrictive alternative.
albertdessaint 10mo ago
You might be interested in Graphiti: https://github.com/getzep/graphiti https://github.com/getzep/graphiti. With a self-hosted Graphiti MCP, you can connect ChatGPT or Claude to build a knowledge graph from all your data. You can then query and update the graph directly through conversation & by ingesting data and visualize the graph using tools like the Neo4j Explorer.Don’t know if that could fit your use case but that could be a fun way!
wim 10mo ago
We're building a new multiplayer IDE but for docs/tasks [1]. Local-first, real-time collaborative and end-to-end-encrypted sync. Not open source but self-hostable with a single binary and hackable with plugins (custom properties, views, code, etc). [1] https://thymer.com https://thymer.com
- abstractbeliefs 10mo ago
  No open source, then I'm not playing. I use Zim wiki for everything just now and I don't like it. I'm in the market for a replacement, and would even pay like with how Immich does it. Unless the source code is available or you put it into legal escrow for when you go bust/abandon the software†, I will not invest my time and data into a system where I am entirely dependent on another organisation or service. † And you will go bust or abandon the software before I die!
  - niklashog 10mo ago
    If you need total control they offer selfhosting.
    - cweagans 10mo ago
      That is not at all the same thing.
- ObengObeng 10mo ago
  I will definitely be checking this out when it comes out! Hopefully soon!
- ednico 10mo ago
  Seems amazing - I cannot wait to test Thymer out!
fourseventy 10mo ago
You should look at https://github.com/TriliumNext/Trilium https://github.com/TriliumNext/Trilium. It's what I use every day for the things that you mentioned.
- Fervicus 10mo ago
  Thanks for sharing. Are you using it on mobile? How is the experience?
  - fourseventy 10mo ago
    I use it on mobile via the web browser, it's pretty good actually. They don't have an official mobile app yet but there might be an unofficial one, I forget exactly.
square_usual 10mo ago
There's a ton of these right now. I did some research the other day and found at least five "open source" (to various degrees, all of these are not strictly speaking open source but open core) notion alternatives, and they're all in some ways better, in some ways worse than notion. I settled on AFFiNE [0] because it felt the snappiest, but they've got a lot of telemetry and tracking so I forked to remove that and use my telemetry-removed frontend as a PWA. [0]: https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE
- xanth 10mo ago
  I've looked into AFFiNE, it doesn't have the native data ingress I'd like.
  - square_usual 10mo ago
    It's got a GraphQL API that seems pretty functional for all the programmatic use cases I had, fwiw.
pscanf 10mo ago
Adding my own to the list: https://github.com/superegodev/superego https://github.com/superegodev/superego (Warning: still an alpha.) Distinctive points: - It exposes the "database metaphor": your data is organized in collections of documents, each collection having a well-defined schema. - It's all local in an app (no server component to self-host). - It has an AI assistant on top that you can use to explore / create / update. - It allows you to create small personal apps (e.g., a custom dashboard). - It allows you to sync data from external sources (Strava, Google Calendar, Google Contacts.) Cons: - The database metaphor is quite "technical". A "normal" user is not comfortable with the idea of creating their own collections, defining a schema, etc. In fact, right now I only have developers and techies as a target audience. - It's not optimized for any one use case. So, for example, as a notes-keeper Notion is obviously much better. - It's still in early stages (I'm working on it alone), so: - There's no mobile app yet. - It doesn't yet support syncing between devices. - There are just 3 connectors to sync from external sources.
elbear 10mo ago
Tiddlywiki
scoring-wade-6c 10mo ago
You can try https://getoutline.com https://getoutline.com
- fallen_comrade 10mo ago
  Can vouch, outline is great
Jaxan 10mo ago
I specifically like md, because I will always be able to open it and modify, even if the original app no longer exists. I use obsidian without any extensions. I must admit that I don’t archive things like exercise activity. So maybe the simple mindset won’t work then.

by xanth 10mo ago

bakli 10mo ago

Like Obsidian?

shmoogy 10mo ago
Obsidian isn't open source
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- echelon 10mo ago
  I'm still happy to use it. It's not like they can rug pull on the data or even the existing app binaries. I'd really like to see the team get rewarded for their work, too. I'd be sad if it went 100% open and they didn't so much as draw a market salary from it. I think if it went open, they'd get nothing. That's the one thing I strongly dislike about open source is that only hyperscalers really economically benefit from it. They've done a remarkable service for all of us.
  - alabhyajindal 10mo ago
    I used to be very against closed source products but changed my mind recently. One of the founders of Obsidian makes some great points here: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/open-sourcing-of-obsidian/1515/11 https://forum.obsidian.md/t/open-sourcing-of-obsidian/1515/1...
    - echelon 10mo ago
      This is a great rebuttal. 99.9% of the internet is closed source and we don't ask for it to be opened. From our ISPs, to Google, to the hyperscalers. If anything, I think we should be asking those things to be open. If we're only asking the little guys, the big guys with trillion dollar market caps skate by. This is exactly how they want it. Fewer gradients for small players to grow.
      - hexo 10mo ago
        I do ask for that and generally refuse to use closed source sw. But... something being opensource doesnt always mean you can change stuff. Like signal-desktop that has build process so badly convoluted that even gentoo doesnt build it itself. (has it improved already?)
        echelon 10mo ago
        Two things: 1) Modern 2010s era "OSI Approved open source" is a meme built by hyperscalers to get free work, poach the efforts of others (Amazon makes hundreds of millions on Redis, Elasticsearch, etc.) and eliminate the threat of smaller players. There are great things like Linux and Blender and ffmpeg. But there is also a concerted battle waged by trillion dollar companies against us using "open" to salt the field of any kind of economic growth salient. By being completely open and not keeping some leverage, you ensure you cannot make the same revenues the big companies can. And they will outspend and outgrow you. They will encircle and even find a way to grow off of your labor while you don't see so much as a dime. 2) You wouldn't be on the internet right now if you really refused to use closed source. The binary blobs in your hardware, your ISP, your wifi. Not even Stallman can do it. I love open source. But I hate how difficult it is to make money. And I hate how the big players have used it to enrich and entrench themselves by making it just the crust of their closed source empires.
    - stronglikedan 10mo ago
      > The cost to benefit ratio is very low for our small team of 2, and our plate is already full. Wow, I didn't know the team was so small - go them!
  - braza 10mo ago
    > It's not like they can rug pull on the data or even the existing app binaries. This. I spend 6 months to export 100K notes from Evernote mostly because they intentionally throttle the exports to a limit and you can extract it only in their proprietary format that truncates some data.
Kye 10mo ago
I was surprised at how similar Trilium looks to Obsidian when it was suggested in a thread somewhere: https://triliumnotes.org/ https://triliumnotes.org/ It's open source and as far as I can tell uses a database.

gman83 10mo ago

AppFlowy ?

blubber 10mo ago
Isn't really (ie fully) open source, is it?

kgarten 10mo ago

Logseq? (Though it uses md)

neodymiumphish 10mo ago

It's definitely a work in progress, but AnyType has a lot of functionality similar to Notion. I haven't used it in a while, so I don't know whether there are plugins in any meaningful capacity. From past experience, it's even pretty simple to host your own sync server to get away from their account/storage limits.

notachatbot123 10mo ago
AnyType is not open-source.
- neodymiumphish 10mo ago
  Fair enough, it's protocol is open source and the apps are source available. Modifications can be made by individuals for their own uses, though. I think it's as close as you can expect to get with a mostly full-fledged Notion competitor. In any case, I don't particularly enjoy AnyType, despite coming back to it a few times to test it out (and still maintaining my own sync server, despite not actively using it, in case I go back to try it out again after some demonstrably updates). Just pointing out that it's a less restrictive alternative.

albertdessaint 10mo ago

You might be interested in Graphiti: https://github.com/getzep/graphiti https://github.com/getzep/graphiti. With a self-hosted Graphiti MCP, you can connect ChatGPT or Claude to build a knowledge graph from all your data. You can then query and update the graph directly through conversation & by ingesting data and visualize the graph using tools like the Neo4j Explorer.Don’t know if that could fit your use case but that could be a fun way!

wim 10mo ago

We're building a new multiplayer IDE but for docs/tasks [1]. Local-first, real-time collaborative and end-to-end-encrypted sync. Not open source but self-hostable with a single binary and hackable with plugins (custom properties, views, code, etc). [1] https://thymer.com https://thymer.com

abstractbeliefs 10mo ago
No open source, then I'm not playing. I use Zim wiki for everything just now and I don't like it. I'm in the market for a replacement, and would even pay like with how Immich does it. Unless the source code is available or you put it into legal escrow for when you go bust/abandon the software†, I will not invest my time and data into a system where I am entirely dependent on another organisation or service. † And you will go bust or abandon the software before I die!
- niklashog 10mo ago
  If you need total control they offer selfhosting.
  - cweagans 10mo ago
    That is not at all the same thing.
ObengObeng 10mo ago
I will definitely be checking this out when it comes out! Hopefully soon!
ednico 10mo ago
Seems amazing - I cannot wait to test Thymer out!

fourseventy 10mo ago

You should look at https://github.com/TriliumNext/Trilium https://github.com/TriliumNext/Trilium. It's what I use every day for the things that you mentioned.

Fervicus 10mo ago
Thanks for sharing. Are you using it on mobile? How is the experience?
- fourseventy 10mo ago
  I use it on mobile via the web browser, it's pretty good actually. They don't have an official mobile app yet but there might be an unofficial one, I forget exactly.

square_usual 10mo ago

There's a ton of these right now. I did some research the other day and found at least five "open source" (to various degrees, all of these are not strictly speaking open source but open core) notion alternatives, and they're all in some ways better, in some ways worse than notion. I settled on AFFiNE [0] because it felt the snappiest, but they've got a lot of telemetry and tracking so I forked to remove that and use my telemetry-removed frontend as a PWA. [0]: https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE

xanth 10mo ago
I've looked into AFFiNE, it doesn't have the native data ingress I'd like.
- square_usual 10mo ago
  It's got a GraphQL API that seems pretty functional for all the programmatic use cases I had, fwiw.

pscanf 10mo ago

Adding my own to the list: https://github.com/superegodev/superego https://github.com/superegodev/superego (Warning: still an alpha.) Distinctive points: - It exposes the "database metaphor": your data is organized in collections of documents, each collection having a well-defined schema. - It's all local in an app (no server component to self-host). - It has an AI assistant on top that you can use to explore / create / update. - It allows you to create small personal apps (e.g., a custom dashboard). - It allows you to sync data from external sources (Strava, Google Calendar, Google Contacts.) Cons: - The database metaphor is quite "technical". A "normal" user is not comfortable with the idea of creating their own collections, defining a schema, etc. In fact, right now I only have developers and techies as a target audience. - It's not optimized for any one use case. So, for example, as a notes-keeper Notion is obviously much better. - It's still in early stages (I'm working on it alone), so: - There's no mobile app yet. - It doesn't yet support syncing between devices. - There are just 3 connectors to sync from external sources.

elbear 10mo ago

Tiddlywiki

scoring-wade-6c 10mo ago

You can try https://getoutline.com https://getoutline.com

fallen_comrade 10mo ago
Can vouch, outline is great

Jaxan 10mo ago

I specifically like md, because I will always be able to open it and modify, even if the original app no longer exists. I use obsidian without any extensions. I must admit that I don’t archive things like exercise activity. So maybe the simple mindset won’t work then.