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Comment by ericax | Hacker News Reader

We'll likely make a formal guarantee to open source in the case of us shutting down. Didn't realize that was a possibility, thanks for the suggestion!

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You may want to look into the Gitlab [1] model of open source monetization, as it has strong resemblance of what you are trying to achieve with Obsidian.

[1] https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/#self-managed

That’s pretty cool and it’s good of you to think about the scenario.

The problem is the bankruptcy court/buyer/ex-spouse/whatever may have a different preference. So you may want to set up something legally binding now when everyone is the same agreement.

Could you also solve this by GPL+Commercial license for those that pay?

Standard Notes is open source (and free software) today, while still in business with a business model similar to yours.

It also allows people to read, audit, and trust the crypto code, which your model does not. For people like me, that’s a hard pass.

"Open source" is both a license and a development model. You're talking about a license, but someone interested in workflow longevity will probably not be satisfied with a source dump from a dead company. They're looking for a community which knows how to maintain it.

As JWZ once said: "You can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic pixie dust of 'open source,' and have everything magically work out." Has there ever been a case where a company as its last act released their software as open-source, and a community formed and picked it up?

I can recall a few on the top of my head, but those are the exception rather than the norm: Blender & Mozilla, though that last one wasn't really a last act. I think I saw a few others, but can't recall which ones, I'd be interested in such a list.

Now, there are interesting communities that form around games, that tend to be a "dead product" after release, and for which there was a source dump (or not, actually): doom, openMW, openRA, etc.

You do realize communities can die out as well?

By definition, that's what happens when its developer community dies off down to size n=0. A source dump without a community is essentially fast-forwarding a (potential) developer community to its death. It should be clear why this is strictly worse.

Parse?

that sounds good in principle but I still wouldn't feel comfortable with it unless I was aware of similar setups that worked out well for the users.

Not saying such examples aren't out there. I just am unaware of any.

If anyone is wonder what this comment is in reply to, this comment is a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23325105, replying to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23325035.

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