this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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Finally you catch up. My own personal work notes; I don't share them with anyone or anything like that. They are just to help me remember what was said in the meeting. That is not usually how "commercial use" is defined.
I imagine Obsidian gets a lot of user via word of mouth. It's definitely how I found it. And yeah, I'm going to point out anytime it comes up that the licensing is very broad and that if the intent is to be a second brain, to keep looking or pay. Does that sound vindictive? It seems pretty helpful to me. None of it is inaccurate. I certainly won't be recommending it.
This definitely falls under commercial use. You are using it as a tool in your work.
It is not. The licensing also offers free use for many applications where other software might charge you a full license anyway.
Again... personal use is free.
You do you, but don't frame your entitlement for free use of products within commercial use as a righteous crusade against an evil indie developers team. It is not. Neither is the Obsidian dev team malicious or in any way exploitive in their licensing model nor is there any ambiguity for what constitutes commercial use. If you were to argue your case against Microsoft, or any other BigTech Giant, I would be on board with you, but in Obsidian's case your criticism is not applicable.
It definitely falls under their definition of commercial use, yeah. But usually commercial use means "if a company is mandating it be used". I can tell the licensing is insane because they don't require this if it's freelance work. What is the difference between me, one dude at my company, taking personal notes via obsidian, and some freelance developer using it in their business? Why does the number of people working at my employer make my use commercial?
The licensing is very broad for the reasons I stated above.
Second brain inevitably includes work-related stuff. So, no, not free for that use, right?
I never called anyone evil or malicious. This is a strawman. Their licensing is unexpectedly broad, and it's frustrating because I thought I'd found a second-brain solution, but it turns out I have not. I assumed (incorrectly!) that Obsidian didn't care how their notetaking app was used, and leveraged the sync feature and the publish feature to make income. I set up my own sync solution (using a plugin!).
The funny thing is that I have gladly paid for this kind of thing before; it's not even really the money-- it's how ridiculous the licensing is. It only makes sense if they meant it like I said above. Like, if I were to mandate that my team all use Obsidian, then I'd need to pay for commercial use, and buy a license for each team member-- that makes sense to me.
That is wrong. Commercial use is a very clearly defined legal term.
Source: I work in software asset management and you wouldn't believe the insane and sometimes malicious licensing models that actually exist, while you complain about and blow up this very benign issue.
If you are a freelancer, then you have to pay for all of your expenses yourself. The devs are in a similar situation and they know how hard it is, to keep yourself afloat, when software licenses are sometimes incredibly expensive.
If you are working in a company with two or more employees, then your employer has to provide and pay for any commercially used licenses that you require for your work.
If you are using Obsidian for work and consider getting a license, request it from your employer, explain how it would improve your workflow, save you time, etc. If your employer rejects your application, then you must stick to using the software that your employer provides you with. If that is MS Word, then your employer mandates you to use MS Word (or pen and paper) for note-taking.
Are work and private life not separate areas of life? Which would belong in separate vaults? And does your employer not provide you with a separate computer for work? Are you using your personal computer for work or are you using your work computer for personal stuff? If it's the former you almost sound like a freelancer, if it's the latter, then you shouldn't do that.
If you just write about work in your diary notes or hold onto an idea for work that you got while grocery shopping, then this is not work use and you are fine, but if you attend a work meeting and take notes using Obsidian, then this is clearly commercial use.
There really is no magic to it. It's not complicated or broad (quite the opposite actually). In the end, you can do what you want, but don't frame indie developers as 'scummy' for trying to make a living, while you profit off of their work. With this I will now end this conversation.
You don't get to end the conversation except by not responding, haha.
You keep using whataboutism as if that matters even a little. It does not. I am aware that there are worse licensing, but what does that matter? I am not using those products, either.
I don't see how this addresses why I should pay for commercial use but a freelancer does not need to. We're both just one person. Why does the size of my company matter if I'm the only one using it? My company would definitely not pay for the license, because they aren't directing me to use Obsidian. This is my point. They notes I take are only for my personal use; I do not share them with anyone at work. Because they're personal.
I do keep separate vaults, but that's just for organization; the tagging situation got out of hand mixing them both in my previous notetaking app. Both vaults are on my phone; only the work-brain is on my work computer. And I do jot down notes during meetings to remember to ask certain questions. Never fear: I'll use some other markdown app for that, haha. I will miss the plugins, though. In fact, you can recreate much of Obsidian in vscode server (self hosted); I used to use that before Obsidian but preferred something that didn't need an internet connection. The plugin is called Foam.
They are scummy because they "need" to get paid but don't pay the plugin developers a cut, and the plugins arguably are the ones bringing value to their application; I confess that this is part of why I never even considered looking to see if there were licensing restrictions. How could they justify accepting payment when they rely so much on free labor from plugin developers to add value to their application? Which is why I made the incorrect assumption that they leveraged their services to make money.
I am not profiting off their work at all. Or, no more than if I were to use a pen and paper to take the same notes. It was just simpler to have everything under the same familiar UI. Oh well.