this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024

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Anytype Desktop 0.40.0 (MULTIPLAYER!) Released 👯 (community.anytype.io)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Good note by @[email protected] is what kind of license they use:

While our core solutions, the infrastructure protocol any-sync, and the data protocol any-block, are released as open source under the permissive MIT license, we distribute the remaining layers, including the middleware library any-heart, and applications like anytype-js, anytype-swift, and anytype-kotlin, under the Any Source Available License. This license grants individuals the freedom to review, modify, and utilize the code for personal, academic, scientific, research, and development purposes. However, for commercial use, consent from the Any Association is required.

This way, we guarantee everyone the right to use, modify, and distribute the data exchange protocol and the data format, ensuring that anyone is free to create any application on top of them. We guarantee free, non-commercial usage of the software and full transparency of the code. However, considering the substantial R&D resources required for the application layer, we believe that businesses and networks utilizing our software for commercial purposes should contribute towards its ongoing development, allowing maintainers to support and enhance the platform.

The Any Association, based in Zug, Switzerland, is an organization that will govern the rights to use the software and will provide an opportunity for other significant contributors to join a sort of digital cooperative and become the governors of the software as well. This empowers significant contributors to co-decide the next steps of product development and protects them from rivals’ abuse.

https://blog.anytype.io/our-open-philosophy/

https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-ts/blob/main/LICENSE.md

There is also another 'open source alternative to Notion' project called AppFlowy, which uses a AGPL-3.0 license. I will try to post about that project once I get more familiar with it

https://github.com/AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

FYI, this is not open source and uses it's own source available license.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Good note, I will edit that in

[+] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I should have added context, my bad

https://anytype.io/

They describe themselves as an "open-source self-hosted all-in-one tool". It behaves and looks similar to Notion, and my understanding is that you can either selfhost for free or use their paid backup service

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That still doesn't explain it. I don't know what Notion is.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

Part of the problem is that I don't know the extent of what people might use this kind of tool for. It's a productivity tool that has docs, calendars, databases, and other tools, but people use it in very different ways. Some people use it for documentation, some use it for course notes / planning, some use it to make dashboards, etc.

There's probably a better way to describe it that I'm not thinking of, so I might recommend checking out the website above until someone else comes along to give a better explanation.

Here's how Wikipedia describes Notion

Notion is a freemium productivity and note-taking web application developed by Notion Labs, Inc. It offers organizational tools including task management, project tracking, to-do lists, and bookmarking. Additional offline features are offered by desktop and mobile applications available for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. Users can create custom templates, embed videos and web content, and collaborate with others in real-time.

Anytype meanwhile is a newer open source and self hosted alternative to the above. Better for privacy etc. There's another open source project with a similar purpose called AppFlowy

[–] davidgro 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

So basically an office suite? Like Google Docs or MS Office?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

You can probably use it to do similar things, but it's a different format. Everything exists in one place, so you're not using it to open and save files externally (but you might be able to export individual pages as markdown).

For example, this post today is announcing that they have implemented collaboration. Until now, people would have been using it individually for personal notes and project management.

The main function I like is being able to make objects with custom fields, which I can then add information to and sort. I haven't used it extensively yet, but I have friends that use Notion for quite a bit

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Ah I see. Thanks for clarifying.

[–] Lumisal 1 points 6 months ago

It just sounds like an old school operating system, like OS/2.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's a ...social workspace? It feels a bit icky though, like being teenage peer pressured to go to a mall. Just a little too consumery.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Yeah I'm guessing that's gonna be part of the business model. I don't personally see it

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Looks like it's made by some fintech people (interestingly most of the top contributors are Russian immigrants) so likely it's not expected to be True Opensource™, but IMO still way better than Notion, which trains its AI on your data whether you want it or not.

I like the graph! It's more functional than one in Obsidian and looks better. Import from Notion is OK. They have yet to implement a web clipper for Firefox, so not very usable for me now, cause I'm avoiding anything Chrome-based considering latest Google endeavors. But I'll definitely check it again after some time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Anytype is actually amazing. It has all the opportunities to become the best Notion replacement.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I would use something like this, but probably not this though. Feels too sneaky somehow, like they're going to pull the rug out as soon as I get comfortable...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I see a lot of this recently.

I wall of text about software whose purpose I have no idea.

Going to their homepage doesn't help much either. Looks like some kind of self hosted social network?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

More of a productivity tool, similar to Notion if you are familiar with that. If you aren't, I tried explaining some more here: https://lemmy.ca/comment/8843380

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The app is a fantastic idea but I can already see myself struggling to convince people to use it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I didn't use Notion much myself, but I'm hoping that AnyType and AppFlowy can implement features that Notion hasn't. That could get people to switch

What would help though is

painless importing from Notion, for people that already built up a lot of content there
guides on the specific changes, similar to what Windows/MacOS or Android/iOS have for people switching over

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I downloded the app since it mentioned i can make a personal wiki with it but the ui is pretty damn confusing. Anyone understand how to make a wiki with it?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I share this criticism, it's got so many features that it gets confusing.

What I did was start with a single page, and then added more pages from that one (I think the / key should bring up options). Trying to understand everything before starting was impossible