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Comment by number6 | Hacker News Reader

My problem with obsidian is that I need a license to use it if I add something work related. I can not realy disentangle both. If Ilearn something new here on HN Iwm will propably use it later at work.

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I am curious, is there any issue with just purchasing the license?

I started out using Obsidian just for university related stuff but found it incredibly useful, so I ended up purchasing the license myself. While I'm not a big fan of subscription software, 50$/year is extremely reasonable, especially considering that your data isn't trapped in someone's cloud.

I am extremly cautios with this small fees. They tend to add up. If I would use Obsidian, I sure would use it all my live. So 50$ * 45 years more to go: 2250$

All the files are locally hosted, and written in standard markdown. You can abandon ship any time you want. It's also ok to pay for good software.

$2250 dollars over 45 years sounds pretty good imo but that's just me haha

Thats what I thought, thats about half the annual operating cost of my personal vehicle. And it does provide me with a lot of value. Its for brainstorming, maintaining contacts, keeping track of projects, etc.

Just a side observation: Many people on HN do make money building software, yet so many users seem completely unwilling to pay for software. In some regards I do understand that, there are quite a lot of "bad companies" out there that you just can't avoid in many circumstances, but as far as I'm concerned, Obsidian seems like the good guy (for now at least).

Personally? Iam at odds with the subscription model for apps but may be better than paying for every major release. I recently started to think about buying software instead of doing a half good job programming something

If it was just $2250 for 45 years, maybe. That's not a payment option. The price will probably go up with inflation. It's probably closer to $4000-8000 after inflation, as $50 will become $100 after a decade or two.

If you go to the extent of including inflation, you should also account for the fact that your income will also likely increase - with raises accounting for inflation and career progression - making the price of a tool that can provide so much value even more negligible.

Currently that's 10% of a month's income, not exactly trivial. They make an excellent products, but I probably will move to a FOSS solution if I find one so I can use it for work.

An Obsidian license is $50. That'd mean a monthly income of $500. There's a good chance that means you're working by yourself, so I'll flag that Obsidian only requires a commercial license if the company has two or more people.

Paragraph 1 in the EULA - https://obsidian.md/eula - say "You need to pay for Obsidian if and only if you use it to contribute, directly or indirectly, to revenue-generating, work-related activities in a company that has two or more people"

Nope, I'm an on call remote consultant without a lot of hours at the moment, because I just moved somewhere without many opportunities for those who can't drive, and I don't have any income at all that isn't tied to a 5+ person company.

I would consider reaching out to see if you can get a special pricing. The team is very inclusive and communicative!

Same here, and honestly I suspect a lot of people probably don't know this and use Obsidian for work or include work-related notes in their free plan without realizing that it technically violates the license.

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