About the survival of our Data ( when Apps die )

Posted by meowky
Jun 9, 2025 at 02:35 PM

Fear of abandonment is the chief reason I refrain from apps that don’t work properly without store my data in the company’s cloud servers. That includes PWA apps like AmpleNote, which misleadingly markets itself as “local-first” but actually operates on the premise that any disconnection from the server would only be temporary.
Abandoned local software will, at the very least, continue to work on an older system. Abandoned cloud-based software is not predictable in any way. They could give me only two months’ notice to export data, and permanently delete everything after that.[^src1]

[^src1]: For instance, the read-it-later app Omnivore did exactly that in November 2024. https://web.archive.org/web/20241029154734/https://blog.omnivore.app/p/omnivore-is-joining-elevenlabs

I also learned that an app being open-source is by no means a guarantee of longevity. The real guarantee is:

- You have the data stored locally, in an accessible format (that is, not just in your browser cache).
- You have tested the export capabilities, and is OK with the results. Not needed for markdown/plain text. (I test monthly all my apps where export is potentially useful, right after testing the integrity of my 3-2-1 backups. Always test your backups and exports.)
- You have a general understanding of the data store format, as well as some idea of what other tools can be used to access/manipulate the data store.