Thank you for this brief history lesson! I had never heard of St. Augustine and his treatise.

How do you think his argument fares now that the concept of purgatory exists?

The assurance that you can just write without having to worry about where the note goes is so powerful.

Exactly this! Thank you!

And thanks for the suggestions, I will check them out!

Wenn der Vermieter ‘sein’ Auto vom Käufer zurückklaut, könnte er sich dann vor Gericht nicht genauso gut verteidigen und auf seinem Diebstahl (eigentlich ja Eigentum) sitzen bleiben und das anwaltlich ausharren? Wie schlimm wäre das?

Polizist: “Bevor wir eintrafen, soll es da so eine Situation gegeben haben.”

Ist der blind? Hat dem keiner das Video gezeigt?

gefaaaaahndet

“Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.” 🫡

Can you elaborate?

But usually commercial use means “if a company is mandating it be used”

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.

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?

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.

Second brain inevitably includes work-related stuff. So, no, not free for that use, right?

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.

Now, what constitutes ‘being pregnant’? Does it begin when the egg is fertilized? Or does it begin when one has unprotected sex that will eventually lead to the egg being fertilized?

And, what constitutes ‘being dead’? Is it when the brain doesn’t function anymore? How would we classify a person, who is comatose, catatonic or braindead, then? Does death commence when the last cell in the body is dead? Would one then be considered alive, when a patch of skin is not ‘dead’ yet?

It’s nice to stake out the grey area of any topic, but if we are honest, it’s a never-ending game, that in your case intends to stall a conversation. Common sense tells you exactly what is work. If you are not sure, then discuss it with someone, ask a lawyer or make up your own opinion. Obsidian devs will not persecute anyone for using their software commercially without buying a commercial license. If you feel entitled to do so, then do so, but don’t try to disassemble the context to justify your actions.

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.

This definitely falls under commercial use. You are using it as a tool in your work.

the licensing is very broad

It is not. The licensing also offers free use for many applications where other software might charge you a full license anyway.

that if the intent is to be a second brain, to keep looking or pay

Again… personal use is free.

I certainly won’t be recommending it.

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.

Apparently I have no reading comprehension. I am sorry. I got confused at some point.

my own personal meeting notes

… are work-related and thus fall under commercial use.

You seemed to think that was crazy, but also don’t seem to understand why Obsidian is hurt more by this decision than I am.

How is Obsidian hurt by you not using it? The only way I see is through the threats you made to “warn other people”, this would be vindictive damage done by you against an indie developer team, who made a private pet project of theirs available to the public.

I am not the person writing a manual. Reading comprehension is key to having an intelligent discussion about any topic via text. Please pay attention.

I would like to write an Operation Manual for municipality’s water system.

Writing comprehension is key to having an intelligent discussion about any topic via text. Please pay attention.

Edit: Apparently I have no reading comprehension. I am sorry. I got confused at some point.

No, you didn’t or I counter-argued and you seem to not have understood my question in the new context that I provided.

‘what constitutes work use

It’s Commercial Use as opposed to Private Use.

“Commercial use describes any activity in which you use a product or service for financial gain. This includes whenever you use software to create marketing materials, since those materials are used for business purposes with the intention of increasing sales.” - HubSpot

In other words: You use it as a means to make money. Plain and simple.

I would like to write an Operation Manual for municipality’s water system. There will be embedded screenshots and some links to other sections of the document.

Ideally we could “publish” to offline html. The customer would also like a printed manual.

This is not personal use. This is commercial use.

If my employer was telling everyone to use Obsidian that would be a different story

In that case your employer would need to provide you with a license.

Not to mention, the core obsidian application is lackluster at best; it’s the plugins that really make it stand out.

If Obsidian is lackluster, then why even complain about its licensing model. Just move on to another programm.

How much of the money goes to plugin creators?

I don’t know and I don’t think it matters. Plugin creators frequently provide donation methods on their sites. I also don’t believe that Obsidian is as profitable as you might think. I don’t think the income generated through licensing covers what the Dev team actually puts in in terms of work, although I don’t have any figures on that.

This is also a poor attempt at moving the goal post. You just realized that you are not behaving ethically… and instead of sucking up to it and either paying 50$/year for a commercial license or moving on to another product (which most definitely has a licensing model as well) you are hating on an indie software dev team. Go and play with OneNote.

You miss the point. The same argument could be brought forth against any other commercial license, like MS Office. But you are right, the answer is: none and I consider myself a FOSS advocate, but this is not the world we live in. Obsidian Dev Team puts in work and for them to be able to continue doing so, they need compensation, it’s work after all.

Most software doesn’t even differentiate between private and commercial use or let’s you pay for both, but makes private use cheaper. What obligation does Obsidian suddenly have to be free for commercial use? It’s already free for private use, educational purposes and even for freelance work. If someone is making money using a tool, then why is it ridiculous to pay for the tool?

No need to apologize. Thank you for sharing your idea. I’ll keep an eye out for natural folders. I think I still have two folders that qualify for this as stated in my post: a diary folder and a template folder.

I can agree with this. But this suggests that my topic-wise foldering wasn’t logical. So what is logical to sort by?

Man, now I have to go from championing Obsidian to warning people away from it. That sucks.

What are you talking about?! How is commercial licensing of an indie product something to warn people about? Maybe start by warning people of Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, SAP, because their licensing models are horrendously exploitive.

You are just frustrated that your entitlement for a free product was not satisfied. Your reaction to vent against Obsidian and by that its Dev Team is bizarre.

It’s bad news for Obsidian, not me.

How is that bad news for Obsidian? The creators don’t care that you don’t use their product if you are not willing to pay for it. What a strange way to frame it like Obsidian Dev Team would need to woo you to use their product by giving it to you for free or something like that. Bizarre.

There’s a million note taking applications out there.

Those have commercial licensing requirements as well. The issue is not Obsidian, but your intent on commercial use. Obsidian actually has very generous terms btw: free for education, private use and freelance. Compare that to the license requirement of any other common software you use.