this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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Hm. I keep notes in Obsidian, including work notes. I wonder if that violates the license. I might abandon Obsidian over this.
This requires a commercial license. If your work does not meet few exceptions mentioned in the text I quoted above.
Sorry for bad news ...
Eh. Theoretically, maybe. Practically, this is a problem of 'what constitutes work use'.
In my opinion, the work notes I take in obsidian are my personal notes. I found obsidian myself, and use it myself for taking notes for work. Stuff doesn't get shared to coworkers, other than the actual text I am writing when I copy paste it out of obsidian.
OP's use case is a work use, in my opinion, as they are using obsidian to produce the output used for work.
Same would apply if a team used obsidian for notes, encouraged use of it for everyone in the team, and/or uses shared vaults as a 'wiki'.
I also see the definition of "work use" rather fuzzy. I have discussed this on Reddit some time ago. And conclusion was: if it is somehow work related you need a license, does matter if you share your voult or on not.
Practically, obsidian does not hunt for people who use the soft without a proper license.
On the other hand obsidian is developed by 2 people, I believe 3 now.
Btw, your employer most probably will disagree with your definition of personal notes as well and the fact that you install obsidian on a work hardware.
Actually, my employer honestly does not care. My department specifically uses unmanaged devices, which we're also explicitly allowed to use privately. The data on them is ours, we are encouraged to encrypt it with a personal key. 'Non-personal' data is stored on onedrive or our own gitlab instance.
But I agree with you that most employers would :)
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.
That's what obsidian state, yes.
Now, what constitutes 'making money'?
If you use it to keep notes for your university courses, you effectively use it to further a cause which in the future will make you money, yet I'm sure you'd agree that doesn't fall into 'commercial use'.
If I use it to organize the research I do - the knowledge of which I then use in a commercial project - does that constitute work use? In my opinion - yes, I get paid to do that research, but it's knowledge for me, so no, it is not 'work use' to me.
Next step - use it for notes specifically for a work project. As long as I am using it for myself and myself only, only sharing snippets of text that have no relevance to obsidian, not work use. Share a canvas created with obsidian? Work use. Share/publish a whole folder/vault as a wiki? Work use.
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.
It's bad news for Obsidian, not me. There's a million note taking applications out there.
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.
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.
A vast majority don't care how any individual uses them. They put collaboration features behind a paywall, but they also host the data. I liked the idea of hosting my files myself, which is what makes this all the more ridiculous. What extra cost does Obsidian incur whether I take a note about a book I read or I take a note about a meeting I was in?
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?
Are you serious? I explained it in the comment you replied to.
No, you didn't or I counter-argued and you seem to not have understood my question in the new context that I provided.
I am no longer going to maintain two forked discussions. Let's combine these into one.
This depends on what do you need form a note taking app. But if your needs are covered by many - great you have a big list to choose from.
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.
You're telling me people prefer paying 55$/month for Adobe that doesn't care about you and will with time get worst and not pay 50$/year for a indie company that has constant growth adding more and more features and giving you a better product!
Because my work notes are personal as far as I'm concerned. If my employer was telling everyone to use Obsidian that would be a different story. Their scope is too wide, and yes, it's frustrating. Not to mention, the core obsidian application is lackluster at best; it's the plugins that really make it stand out. How much of the money goes to plugin creators?
Just scummy all around.
This is not personal use. This is commercial use.
In that case your employer would need to provide you with a license.
If Obsidian is lackluster, then why even complain about its licensing model. Just move on to another programm.
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.
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.
Obsidian says that if I take my own personal meeting notes in Obsidian, that magically makes it commercial use. That is what I'm complaining about.
I explained why I chose Obsidian. I promise you very few people would use it without plugins. It's not terrible or anything, but just lackluster. Without plugins it becomes far less useful. If tomorrow they said they were removing the ability to use plugins, would you continue to use Obsidian without them? I doubt it.
It does matter because you made it about devs "needing" compensation. If you believe that, then it should translate to the people actually making Obsidian stand out: the plugin creators. No?
You have no idea what moving the goalposts means. I am just extrapolating from your own stance. I already said I'm abandoning Obsidian. 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.
... are work-related and thus fall under commercial use.
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.
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.
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.
That isn't me! Holy shit. I am not the same person as the OP. How else can I say this? Look at the usernames.
Apparently I have no reading comprehension. I am sorry. I got confused at some point.
@effingjoe @hutchmcnugget @gelberhut what?! Why?!
You could just get rid of your MS Office License instead, but this seems more like a common value issue, where users don't value the work invested in developing a tool/thing as highly as the creator.
Also: Other note-taking apps have other licensing requirements or in-app-ads. Assuming you could dodge paying for one service by migrating your operations to another one is naive.