The business model is always that people who really want it for free can self host, and people who don't want to deal with the hassle will pay for hosting. Seems like a reasonable strategy to me.
Agree with your comment. What we've found is that most people don't actually want to self-host, even technical users who can. But they all want the optionality to self-host, which you don't have with most SaaS's like Notion or Roam. This is doubley important for "second brains", apps where you brain dump your closest thoughts.
As Balaji has said, given the choice, "you'd always pick open source over a comparable proprietary equivalent."
But I'd gladly pay more to have someone else manage hosting...
Well, it's a "trend" as old as dirt, really. The "Linux desktop" was, for years, little more than a series of clones of closed-source Windows apps. Arguably even the original GNU programs started as clones of existing Unix tools. It's unsurprising that this would later happen for web-based services too.
> The business model is always that people who really want it for free can self host, and people who don't want to deal with the hassle will pay for hosting.
Again, pretty old news - Wordpress is almost 20 years old at this point.
The problem of this setup, though, is that the commercial version will typically set the roadmap and priorities, while the open version will end up lagging.
The number of times where I would be HAPPY to work on a project for free to fix an issue or add a feature I want - I couldn't count.
Instead, it's always reaching out to support and "Thanks for your feature request - it's not currently on our road map, but I've added it to our list."
Google cloud marketplace allows you to launch all kinds of open source solutions with a click. This includes the setup for databases.
Though it's not a place that a non technical user would think to go, and I expect it's not really as simple as it promises. The devil is always in the details.
Exactly and you also don't own the data or have any expectation of privacy.
I imagine this company selling a visually appealing unit similar to how xbox and playstation aim to be more of an elegant accent piece than a clunky electronic box. This way when the user gets the product they just open, plug it in, create an account and password, wait for it to initialize, and then you're good to go and can start immediately downloading apps. Then just download an accompanying app on your phone/desktop/computer and connect to your own personal cloud where you own all your software and data. Could even sell upgradeable units for a premium that have an easy access panel to just swap or plug in additional RAM or SSD modules.
I also just setup a cron job to daily check for changes, and if there are git commit and git push and now I can access my notes from any device with a browser.