the terms of usage really confuse me on this. there it says:
For the avoidance of doubt, the use of OBSIDIAN for the exercise of your own trade or profession for which you are compensated compensation (e.g. teamwork with colleagues, writing work reports, etc.) does not qualify as Personal Use.
Of course they can't enforce or control anything if you sync using your own infrastructure so its safe to ignore (for now) but that doesn't feel great either.
looks very interesting! i was looking for something like obsidian a couple of years ago and i ended up with dokuwiki because its simple, customizable and F(L)OSS. dokuwiki works well enough for me but its somewhat clumsy and doesn't really work offline.
maybe i am missing something, but i read that you can only use it in non-commercial settings without a license. this introduces an issue for me: not because i want to use it commercially without paying developers, but because from a solarpunk perspective i would like to avoid that dichotomy (commercial vs. non-commercial) altogether.
would love to hear your thoughts on this.
i am always happy to see people setting up their own instance - nextcloud or not - so cheers to that 🙌
its also a good idea to try alternatives to find what suits your needs (and the needs of other users who you share your instance with). no system is perfect and knowing a systems' issues is important if you are responsible for maintaining it.
i think a diverse landscape of open source project is also important so i am happy to see the link posted by poVoc. good to see that people put effort in making distributed hosting even better.
having said all that i do also want to share a more positive view on nextcloud with you. i genuinely think that nextcloud is a great system. it is easy to install and to maintain. it integrates well enough with most standard applications that people want to use. and if it doesn't, a work around is usually two clicks away - thanks to the giant user community. in all the years that i have used it (in various contexts) it has rarely let me down. in my opinion it has reached a point (in terms of usability and stability) at which it becomes a great alternative to big tech platforms. importantly: also for organizations which still need to be convinced that free (libre) projects are a "good enough". to me this last point is especially important - migrating an organization away from big tech can be stressful. relying on nextcloud as a fairly stable system which is used by a huge community lowers my level of stress.
nextcloud is not perfect but it allows me to provide whats needed to those i care about without causing me nightmares :)
Maybe I am pointing out the obvious but I want to share 2 experiences considering opsec and alternative software.
First, what helps me most to establish a healthier and safer relation to tech and to the online world is approaching communities offline. Connecting to a local hackerspace/hacklab and sharing experiences with people there is not only a lovely way to learn about alternatives but also to create the potential of sharing them with others. Building Infrastruktur together, organizing workshops, sharing tools, you name it. Establishing connections and contributing in such spaces even if you dont consider yourself a hacker can go a long way. check out hackerspaces.org to find something in your neighborhood.
Second, whenever I use an online tool, i am asking myself: is there any legitimeate reason why i need to do this online?And if i cant think of anything, i invest a couple of minutes to research how i can do the task offline. For example: I need to invert the colors of a black and white image. plenty of search results point to websites which can do this for you. "just upload your picture here". But you can do this locally as well with free (and open source) tools like gimp. examples like gimp or libreoffice are a great start. But how do I find alternatives that are open source for concrete issues that i want to solve? I often use alternativeto.org. I type in the name of the website that offers a service or the name of a commercial product and it usually provides plenty of open source options. By learning how to do things locally, I built a broad set of skills over time and i learn a lot about the free Software ecosystem. The example i gave is of course very simple, but you can take this approach to services that are less intuitive, for example: how to split or merge a pdf. the less you do online and the less you need to trust third parties to provide you a service, the easier it becomes to pay attention to opsec when you really need it in the online world.
thanks for the update! happy pride month and happy hacking! Ⓐ