Proton and the end-to-end encrypted note-taking app Standard Notes are joining forces. We’ve long been admirers and are excited to welcome Mo and his team.
I’ve been decreasingly enthused about Standard Notes since I started self hosting it.
First, it was a little weird that the biggest draw of their premium subscription was not their cloud but extensions, which were mostly made by third parties and needed only a static site to host. But I could host my own extensions so this was no big deal.
Then they made it harder to host and install your own extensions, making you have to select them one at a time instead of pointing to a single place.
Then they started moving functionality like folders into extensions.
More recently, a bug appeared where the logged in account would start trying to sync with the default instance instead of the one you initially entered, on both desktop and mobile apps.
And possibly the last straw for me, they discontinued synching self-hosted instances on their web app, without warning.
And I haven’t been particularly thrilled with the idea of putting all my privacy needs under a single banner either. Email isn’t secure. You need to put a ton of trust in your VPN provider. I don’t think either of those services should be provided by the same company…
ETA: When did Standard Notes add AI generated pictures to their homepage? They don’t look good.
First, it was a little weird that the biggest draw of their premium subscription was not their cloud but extensions, which were mostly made by third parties and needed only a static site to host. But I could host my own extensions so this was no big deal.
Yes.
Then they made it harder to host and install your own extensions, making you have to select them one at a time instead of pointing to a single place.
They really want you to pay for the product, ultimately they are a business. You self hosting without a subscription doesn’t help them.
Then they started moving functionality like folders into extensions.
As a long time user… I’m fairly confident that folders always were an extension? Of course folders used to be a layer upon tags and now they’re just kinda the same thing.
… in any case it doesn’t really sound like you were ever a customer and I don’t think they’re going to miss you much. Maybe this is still good information for other folks that don’t want to pay them though.
And I haven’t been particularly thrilled with the idea of putting all my privacy needs under a single banner either.
I do share that concern. Proton is increasingly the “big privacy tech” company. That’s also not an inherently bad thing to have though as big companies do carry more weight in political discussions. They can help represent privacy in legislation (for better or worse companies are people for this purpose in the US).
Email isn’t secure. You need to put a ton of trust in your VPN provider. I don’t think either of those services should be provided by the same company…
Email can be (close to) secure with PGP, which Proton is just a fancy PGP client.
The VPN was created because they needed a VPN they could trust for their email customers in sketchy areas.
I think Proton grew out of necessity then because they realized both that they could and it’s useful for them to grow.
I understand the need for Standard Notes to make money, but I believe that offering the convenience and security of hosting is a good way to do this, not by selling subscriptions for self-hosted users to access extensions that are mostly wrappers for someone else’s work. Especially the editors:
(This is also probably why so many Standard Notes editors look out of place next to each other; they were made by totally different people at different times.)
I don’t entirely disagree… But, if they build the entire platform and you can just self host and use someone else’s editors inside their platform, they’re not making any money and the fact that they made their code open source and overly generous is ultimately probably a major factor in that.
Ultimately you may be about to use someone else’s markdown editor, but they made that possible.
As it stands they claim to give you a pretty steep discount if you use your own servers. I don’t know how steep of a discount it really is…
But standard notes was never free as in beer, it was free as in speech… And AFAIK there’s nothing to stop you from learning to code, forking the app, removing the licensing mechanism, and making your own build.
AFAIK there’s nothing to stop you from learning to code
I learned to self host. I learned to hack the extensions so they’d work when the SN company broke them.
But sure, it’s my fault for not learning enough. How dare I expect to take someone else’s code and just run it (ie, the thing they’re doing with their editors)
Gatekeeping valid criticism with ad hominem does nothing. I’ve already suggested multiple positive ways SN can make money, and it’s by offering value rather than selling subscriptions to editors they didn’t make and don’t maintain.
Thankfully I don’t need to show my contributions to open-source to prove myself to you, because I’m sure at that point you’d just shift the goalposts to some other arbitrary thing.
I’ve been decreasingly enthused about Standard Notes since I started self hosting it.
And I haven’t been particularly thrilled with the idea of putting all my privacy needs under a single banner either. Email isn’t secure. You need to put a ton of trust in your VPN provider. I don’t think either of those services should be provided by the same company…
ETA: When did Standard Notes add AI generated pictures to their homepage? They don’t look good.
Yes.
They really want you to pay for the product, ultimately they are a business. You self hosting without a subscription doesn’t help them.
https://standardnotes.com/help/self-hosting/subscriptions https://standardnotes.com/help/48/can-i-use-extensions-with-a-self-hosted-server
As a long time user… I’m fairly confident that folders always were an extension? Of course folders used to be a layer upon tags and now they’re just kinda the same thing.
… in any case it doesn’t really sound like you were ever a customer and I don’t think they’re going to miss you much. Maybe this is still good information for other folks that don’t want to pay them though.
I do share that concern. Proton is increasingly the “big privacy tech” company. That’s also not an inherently bad thing to have though as big companies do carry more weight in political discussions. They can help represent privacy in legislation (for better or worse companies are people for this purpose in the US).
Email can be (close to) secure with PGP, which Proton is just a fancy PGP client.
The VPN was created because they needed a VPN they could trust for their email customers in sketchy areas.
I think Proton grew out of necessity then because they realized both that they could and it’s useful for them to grow.
I understand the need for Standard Notes to make money, but I believe that offering the convenience and security of hosting is a good way to do this, not by selling subscriptions for self-hosted users to access extensions that are mostly wrappers for someone else’s work. Especially the editors:
(This is also probably why so many Standard Notes editors look out of place next to each other; they were made by totally different people at different times.)
I don’t entirely disagree… But, if they build the entire platform and you can just self host and use someone else’s editors inside their platform, they’re not making any money and the fact that they made their code open source and overly generous is ultimately probably a major factor in that.
Ultimately you may be about to use someone else’s markdown editor, but they made that possible.
As it stands they claim to give you a pretty steep discount if you use your own servers. I don’t know how steep of a discount it really is…
But standard notes was never free as in beer, it was free as in speech… And AFAIK there’s nothing to stop you from learning to code, forking the app, removing the licensing mechanism, and making your own build.
I learned to self host. I learned to hack the extensions so they’d work when the SN company broke them.
But sure, it’s my fault for not learning enough. How dare I expect to take someone else’s code and just run it (ie, the thing they’re doing with their editors)
“I paid (and contributed) nothing and I’m angry I wasn’t coddled”
Gatekeeping valid criticism with ad hominem does nothing. I’ve already suggested multiple positive ways SN can make money, and it’s by offering value rather than selling subscriptions to editors they didn’t make and don’t maintain.
Thankfully I don’t need to show my contributions to open-source to prove myself to you, because I’m sure at that point you’d just shift the goalposts to some other arbitrary thing.
they make you pay for the app even if you self host, even though it’s open source, it’s stupid