future proof tools
Hi,
Today I use Obsidia and want to move to something other
I would like to go with something that’s future proof and doesn’t have any vendor lock-in.
Something that is simple to use on Mobile and Laptops.
What can you suggest?
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
You might try The Archive! If the Archive has too much vendor lock-in and isn't future-proof enough, then Emacs might be your cup of poison.
Will Simpson
My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
My Internet Home — My Now Page
The only real future proof tool that come in my mind is Emacs.
And it is not so simple :-)
Even an open source tool that hasn't a solid history can be discontinued, vendor lock-in is not the only possibile factor for future proof.
I've bet the future of my notes on markdown and having everything on my pc and not in the cloud, so Obsidian for me remains (I hope) a good solution.
I agree with @Will . I think your best bet for software would be the Archive, in terms of not having "vendor lock-in". You buy it once and get all future versions without cost.
Having each zettel existing as a markdown (i.e., text) file makes it future proof from the perspective of not using a proprietary file format. And if you have it in this simple form, without a bunch of fancy add-ins, you can access it with a variety of software. Again, you're not tied to one vendor. I've already switched my Zettelkasten software using the same set of markdown files and will probably do so again in the future.
Then you just have to ensure that you can access your computer files indefinitely into the future, so store them on your computer and on a good external backup drive (not the cloud). If you really want to be future proof, in this regard, also print out and store paper copies.
There is no media that will last forever, although if you want better longevity than computer and paper, you might try papyrus or clay tablets or gold plates
Having said all that, outside of some society meltdown, your longevity will likely expire before paper files
I use Emacs and am hopeful that the tool will serve me till the end of my life. Indeed, I am generally skeptical of longevity of software products, especially the ones that are closed source and/or offered by software venture business. That’s one reason why I remain within the Emacs ecosystem whenever I can, and haven’t used proprietary tools like Obsidian, Logseq, Notion, etc. With Emacs, though, the concern is not with vendor lock-in but the health of the developer community. Will Emacs stay relevant long enough, when the community is shrinking and learning curve remains high for newcomers? Will it ever be mobile friendly, when users increasing use them in place of notebook/desktop computers? That, I don’t know.
That being said, I think vendor lock-in is less relevant so long as the product allows data export/migration in a widely available format. What you want to ensure is that your data are stored in a way that can be fully restored in a different environment. It’s kinda like choosing a web browser in that sense. So long as the content data are stored in the standard format (like HTML, CSS, etc.), then the data and knowledge being held remain the same; depending on your choice of web browser, they are rendered slightly differently and how you interact with them would change a little bit. But your contents and how they are related won’t change in essence. That’s what you want to care about as you accumulate your notes.
So when I choose a note-taking tool, I would prefer one that adds few proprietary metadata as possible to function. If your notes are in Markdown, I’d prefer a tool that works within the constrains of the format, and not one that needs all kinds of auxiliary data for “rich” features. From what I see, many note-taking software are like that these days, which is a good thing.
@zettelsan said:
Exactly. What we want is data interoperability. As Dorian Taylor said in "Radical interoperability is a political agenda" (2022):
@zettelsan said:
The analogy of HTML : Browser :: Markdown : Zettelkasten is very direct, as Markdown was originally created as a lightweight markup language that could be converted to valid HTML. When thinking about interoperability, it would not be a bad idea to think about how to build a Zettelkasten that can be easily converted to a website, because Web standards have become the worldwide lingua franca of textual interoperability. (But this doesn't mean you would have to use Markdown; there are other lightweight markup languages that could work.)
I have learned about the most interoperable features of markup languages by studying and using the document converter Pandoc, which can convert between many different markup formats, and I recommend learning about it if you don't already use it.
I wouldn't worry about how much metadata a software tool adds to files if the metadata is in an interoperable format like YAML that Pandoc can convert. You should use as much metadata as you need to accomplish your aims, in my view, and the more easily you can customize that metadata to fit your aims in your software tools, the better. Fear not the metadata!
Thank you for your input!
At the moment, I’m using OneDrive to store my Obsidian files so I can access them across different devices.
I agree that Obsidian may already solve the problem I’m facing.
While I’m comfortable using Emacs, I’ve come to appreciate how Obsidian’s backlink feature adds a lot of value — it’s a big part of why I’m leaning toward it.
Is backlink such a special feature? I'm not sure how you are using Emacs for note-taking, but if you are using Org Roam, it is a built-in feature. There are now a few note-taking packages to choose from, so you should look at Emacs in terms of these tools, not just Emacs itself.
I'm not shilling for Emacs, just so you know. I understand the learning curve and am just curious to know what prevent people from adopting it these days. At some point in future I might want to do something to improve the situation, if I could.