I was looking for an open source, privacy friendly alternative to Notion, and discovered Standard Notes, Notesnook.
They both have free and paid subscriptions, which differ in features about writing a note(more rich functions, formatting, creating folders, etc).
However, I found that even the offline versions(or self-hosted) have restricted functionalities. How is this even possible? It’s open source, but how do they restrict the paid functions for a fully offline use? Is there any way to use the paid features without subscribing? To me, it makes absolutely no sense that I have to “subscribe” to use solely a client-side functionality, and none of their cloud/server feature.
Yes, I’m aware nice open source apps doesn’t just fall from the sky, and it’s important to know their business model.
It’s just that I don’t understand that they charge a “subscription fee” for something that has nothing to do with their servers. I have been donating to FOSS projects I like(Tor, Mullvad browser, Veracrypt, Whonix, Tails) since I greatly appreciate their effort. However, paying a subscription for fully offline use just doesn’t make sense to me.’
You mean that I have to look up the source code, remove the part that checks subscription for a specific feature, and recompile to make my fork of the Standard Notes?
Developing the app and updating it needs resources. Making their software Open source should not be a punishment for them. They give you an option to self host with all the pro features (for free). Which I think is very generous for people who don’t want to compile the software after editing the code. However, if you can do this after every update then that’s also because the project was FOSS to begin with. I don’t really think this ranting is necessary. If it was a closed source app then you will have to pay even for an offline version.
AFAIK, standard notes charges you money for the selfhosted version. Their Supernote part of the app is not open source so I don’t think you can compile the most important component of the app even if you want.
Notesnook, gives you all the pro features for free if you choose to self host. The whole app is open source so you have the choice to fork it however you desire. But, I still think you should make a donation (you can find the link on their github) if you can. They are a small team without support of something like a “big corp.” [proton :)]
As I wrote above, I do donate to other useful FOSS projects like Tor, Mullvad, VeraCrypt, Whonix, etc. And paying to use an open source is okay. What matters is that I have to “subscribe” for a feature that works totally offline.
If the supernote part is not open source, I wouldn’t use SN since there are TONS of better closed source notebook apps like Notion, Obsidian, etc. I’m currently using Joplin, and considering self-hosting Notesnook(though this seems to be in beta).
Then just don’t use it? The solution is to hack out the code yourself, see if self hosting works fined or see if someone else has already done this for you on GitHub.
Open source does not imply anything other than what is laid on in the license agreement. You can build some MIT licensed malware and it still valid. You can also build software that requires paying 10 trillion dollars to click a button to turn it red to green, license it as AGPL, and allow everyone to see the source code connecting to the site.
What you are frustrated with is the product itself, has nothing to do with source code. Open source gives you the ability to alter it if you want.
This is similar being upset that your free toaster burns toast even though it comes with a schematic of the electronics. Ideally it won’t burn toast, but also just because someone gave you a blueprint doesn’t made that the product has to be good.
If what Nightingale said is true, Standard Notes isn’t even fully open source. Whatever the case is, it seems pretty clear to me to not use SN. Thanks everyone for the reply
You’re not subscribing to pay for space in the server. You’re subscribing to pay for a small slice of their pizza and for a tile of their roof, while they maintain and improve the application you then get to use. You’re also paying for any small business loans used to fund the initial development. FOSS is not gratis. In general, with FOSS, you pay the old school way, with money, not with your human right for privacy, or with your valuable data.
Hi OP, first of all it’s completely okay to take the source code and self host it if you don’t want to pay for it and yes you have to edit it yourself to remove checks and all other stuff or simply just go to server and database and promote your account to admin, that’s it no need to bypass any checks or something. Simple!
But think about this for a second
You want to selfhost a service right? You need a domain & Hosting service, you will need to make sure you’ll keep it updated with newer versions, you would need to deal with any downtime yourself. Maybe you’ll not even get support for the selfhosted version.
So is it worth to not pay for pro plan which can handle everything for yourself (updates, domains, downtime)? I think it would be cheaper and lot less of headache to just pay for a pro plan rather than selfhost.
However, if cost is not a concern for you and you want to fiddle with the service, or maybe you already have server already then in that case yeah selfhost makes sense.
But I would always encourage to just pay for service. It will help the creators financially and the product will not go to abandonware graveyard.