Is Obsidian a good tool to use for writing technical manuals? I would like to write an Operation Manual for municipality’s water system. There will be embedded screenshots and some links to other sections of the document.
Ideally we could “publish” to offline html. The customer would also like a printed manual.
If Obsidian is no good, I would love suggestions on software you have used to write short manuals with pictures, preferably not Word.
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.
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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.
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.
… 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.
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