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Anytype.io
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Posted by Lucine
Jul 22, 2023 at 05:15 PM
There’s an insightful thread going on in hackernews* on this topic in case anyone’s interested.
The news received a mostly critical reception there. The one that interested me most is people’s criticism of it being open source, one of the founders replied on the thread that it’s open source, but it doesn’t seem to be, and is instead “source available”, which has more restrictions on the use of the source code. It’s fine by me, they can do whatever they want with their code, but why consciously, deliberately mislead about them being open source? I think they want to associate that idea with their product, and count on people not taking a closer look.
One of the top comments, a guy who works at Notion apparently, all but claimed they copied everything from Lotus Agenda. That’s a PIM that gets mentioned here a lot, and since I’ve never used it, I am wondering if any of the members here could comment on whether they really are similar, and if so to what extent / in what way.
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36799548
Posted by Dormouse
Jul 23, 2023 at 02:48 PM
There’s quite a few apps inspired by Lotus Agenda.
Many of the open source licence arguments remind me of the Life of Brian.
They seem to have wanted to be open source but scared by the MongoDB issues and worried that their income stream would be stolen and so devised their own licence, with some code being entirely open source.
One of the issues with source available is that most people don’t understand what it is. Nearly all the demands I’ve seen by “open source” fans have been around being able to check the code, which source available allows, but the “open source” branding has grabbed all the oxygen.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Jul 24, 2023 at 06:40 AM
Oh dear, the Lotus Agenda thing again. I can’t believe people are still “accusing” developers of ripping off Agenda. It’s an ancient program, pretty good in its own way, but with very limited resemblance to AnyType (or indeed any other modern PIM), except inasmuch as it uses a list format, a calendar, and rich-text notes. As did many programs before it. Agenda itself was accused of being a rip-off of another well-known PIM in the day, the name of which I’ve totally forgotten.
AnyType is more similar, perhaps, to Lotus Notes, but that was a truly horrible thing. I admit to being fascinated by it and trying to use it as the backbone of our intracompany communications. But it just wasn’t friendly enough (especially for sysadmins!). We resorted instead to a very powerful but now, alas, moribund mail/notes/filing system called DeskNow. Very easy to use, very powerful Australian software that died a couple of decades ago.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Jul 24, 2023 at 06:41 AM
Heh, that’s amusing. I made my Lotus Notes comment before reading the interesting YCombinator thread – and the very first post mentions Lotus Notes. Well, there are a few people who remember it, then.
Posted by NickG
Jul 24, 2023 at 11:42 AM
Most of this thread seems to be self-certified opens source purists complaining that Any doesn’t follow their particular brand of FOSS and people complaining that Anytype “rips off” two antediluvian products from Lotus. For these purposes, “antediluvian” means “before the internet”.
I’ve been forced to use Notes in many different environments. It was horrible and required a substantial, well qualified IT support team to do anything but the simplest things.
I never used Agenda, but I’ve used many, many information managers and I can say that Anytype has the potential to be as good as any all of them; whether that potential will be realised remains to be seen.
As to the “is it or is it not truly open source” - it is exactly what the Anytype team says it is.