About the survival of our Data ( when Apps die )

Posted by Mike
Jun 21, 2025 at 02:27 PM

My personal list of note-taking app requirements to ensure longevity of stored information:

- Only use open-source software. Period. Even if the main developer stops working on the software, you can find and pay someone to add features and fix bugs because the source code is available. You could also improve it if you know or learn how to code.

- Only use apps that save data in open formats. Bonus points for tried-and-true text-based formats such as XML, plain ASCII text, markdown. I’m also OK with SQLite databases because it’s open-source, portable, and there’s a plethora of ways to extract the data from it.

- No web-based tech which immediately rules out Obsidian. Any program that uses Electron will be a memory hog and be at the mercy of the javascript ecosystem (Node.js, Chromium, etc.), OS compatibility, and could be a security risk (any vulnerability in Chromium or Node can potentially be exploited). Not to mention, if something catastrophic ever happened in the world, running Obsidian or Logseq on low-end hardware would be near impossible.

- Desktop first! While having a mobile connection to my notes is convenient, it’s not as important as having a solid desktop experience with the ability to intuitively export data, import data, and organize it as I see fit. Bonus points if it’s cross-compatible with all of the major desktop operating systems.

After trying many many programs over the years (and still searching), I landed on CherryTree for the foreseeable future. It saves data as XML or in an SQLite database and notes can be exported as plain text or HTML. It’s actively developed and open-source. Several years ago the developer rewrote it in C++ (from Python) which improved performance greatly and C++ is a well known programming language. It’s simple to outline, organize, format, and find notes. Similar to Obsidian, you can quickly jump to notes by typing the name of the note/node. It’s not perfect and lacks some functionality such as easy web clipping, mind mapping, etc. but I can live with that knowing my notes will be around and accessible for a long time.