Clarification on project's license and open source state · standardnotes/forum · Discussion #3196
github.com
Hello 👋, Just came across this project, and saw the app being advertised as open source, like on this page where it's advertised as "100% open source". Looking at the app repo though, the licensing...

Hello everyone,

I’ve been using Standard Notes on the recommendation of Privacy Guides since the beginning of this year, I believe, and it has truly been a fantastic experience. It serves my purpose perfectly, is truly cross-platform, open source, and lightweight. It was a real find, and I couldn’t be happier to have it installed. However, it seems that they are planning to change the licensing to one that restricts companies from abusing their code (which makes sense), but I wanted to know if this goes against the guidelines in terms of considering it recommendable.

I don’t really understand licenses, so correct me if I’m wrong, but with this change if the project becomes private, a fork couldn’t be created for all users who want to continue having the software format but not the backend… Is that correct?

Thanks

  • johntash@eviltoast.orgEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    For anyone looking for an alternative, I really like Trilium so far. It’s completely open source and the main dev and community seem great.

    The performance is way better for me than SN. SN couldn’t handle a large number of notes very well when I tested it last.

    The only downside imo is there’s no real mobile client, but the mobile web interface is still pretty good and usable.

    • hedgehog@ttrpg.networkEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Trilium looks pretty interesting but not like a great direct replacement. One major feature gap is the lack of custom editor plugins, which is essential for me.

      Another app I’ve seen recommended as an alternative is Joplin. I don’t use it myself, but it does have custom plugins, including for custom editors. So for anyone who finds the lack of a mobile app or custom editors to be a deal-breaker, Joplin’s likely worth checking out.

      • johntash@eviltoast.orgEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        It’s been a few years but Joplin always felt clunky to me, and sync was extremely slow. I’m not sure if it even had plugin support when I tried it last.

        Trilium does actually have plugin support it’s just not as discoverable imo. You can create backend scripts and also frontend scripts that could act like a new editor.

        There aren’t a ton of public ones, but check out https://github.com/Nriver/awesome-trilium for a few examples if you’re interested.

        • hedgehog@ttrpg.networkEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Oh cool! I’ll check those out.

          Having looked at it a bit more, even if it doesn’t end up replacing Standard Notes for me, it still looks promising, particularly given the ease of self hosting it. Self hosted it looks like it could be useful for shared notes, too, even though that doesn’t seem to be its intended use case.

          A big part of the appeal for me is that Standard Notes already had a bunch of editors and that it was easy to create my own - they provide a starter app and you can just use React and/or any web libraries of your choice. I’ve looked through the Trilium docs and while they’re not as good, they’re probably good enough.

          Another big difference is that Standard Notes also sandboxes its editors, such that they only have access to the current note. It looks like Trilium’s executable JS code notes lack a similar feature. Then again, that also has a positive side effect of meaning plugin devs have a lot more power and flexibility in terms of what they build.