Firstly Joplin is great note taking app and if that is all you want you really should go for it. I used it for years and was really happy.

But Obsidian is far more than just a note app. It like a Wikipedia page, you can add links within the text of your notes to another note. But they are also bi-directional, meaning you can see the incoming and outgoing links.

Making easy to use the related notes instead of just link to it. Sometimes you did not even think this note could use that note information and it shows you can connect them.

Not only that Dataview lets you live index and query your data. Letting me build a template and query that data dynamics.

there’s a git plugin which can sync with any git server

You can use FolderSync to sync your .md dir to nextcloud. It suited me well because I use foldersync for other purposes, too

It’s just markdown. You should know how to use git, use it.

The Android app is horrible btw. If I had to guess it’s just a desktop web page scaled down and packaged in an app.

They also want to be able to support their families by making money through the Obsidian application, which could be more difficult in an open source environment.

This is the only one that seems really legit to me. That and the other commenter that said open source is more work, which is probably true, and if you’re not getting benefit it could be a net loss.

It’s extra work they don’t totally see the value in and they want to be able to sell their product? Those seem like pretty normal reasons not to maintain an open source project.

I was about to comment that their website also claims “legitimate interest” to create a personalised ad profile on me, before I realised that that is not the official Obsidian website. But yeah, the stated reasons are dumb.

There’s nothing there that really strikes me as disingenuous or bad. If they wanna be closed source, they can be, for whatever reason(s) they want. Does it mean a number of people (me included) are less likely to use it? Yes. But outside of our bubble here, most people don’t care about open vs closed source software.

I don’t know about Zettlr, but last I looked at Logseq it worked off markdown files similar to Obsidian.

That said, I felt Logseq wasn’t quite ready for prime time when I was doing my research a year or so ago. So I went with Obsidian and have been very happy with it.

Been using Logseq for six months, and yes. It’s all just .md and media files referenced by relative links.

This was an important factor the choice to use it. Having used several note taking applications / systems, getting your data ‘out’ in a painless fashion is the #1 concern.

Exactly, that and the mobile app. Having simple markdown files and ability to sync them with Syncthing are just too good.

I’ve heard good things about anytype.io, but I havent had the chance to use it personally.