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Comment by rukshn | Hacker News Reader

I also installed it on my computer to give it a try, but then as you mentioned I could not find who are behind it other than it's based in China. So decided to just keep with Obsidian

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Took me like a minute to find out who are behind it. Committers on GitHub project point to two profiles:

- https://github.com/88250

- https://github.com/Vanessa219

The first profile has a README (zh-CN, easily translated) introducing themselves as a married couple as well as their career trajectory leading to their current company. Googling the company name leads me to https://www.tianyancha.com/company/3153162387 showing the company’s legal structure, the legal names of the couple, their address, etc. (again, zh-CN but easily translated). Looks like I can view their financial reports too if I have a subscription.

The profiles also link to their social media accounts (on their own dev-focused community).

What more is there to know? At least it’s more than the average ShowHN asking for your email and sometimes credit card. I don’t understand these “couldn’t find much about them” claims.

The link you posted gives me "According to relevant legal regulations, access is temporarily not supported in your current location." and "If your device or the Wi-Fi environment you are in is using a VPN service, please disable it and try again."

I'm not using any VPN. Normal internet from Germany

It is also unavailable from Canada.

Same in the US.

And Australia.

I vaguely recall this being part of a tit-for-tat thing between China and the anti-Chinese. There have been movements to restrict Chinese access to FOSS, because forking FOSS lowers Chinese dependence on the West, along with (ironic) accusations that the "authoritarian" Chinese are limiting access to Western tech products. I thought there was some sort of legislative or judicial outcome that came out of it, but no luck with a quick google.

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U.S. restriction on Chinese use of open-source microchip tech would be hard to enforce - October 13, 2023

> U.S. lawmakers are pressuring the administration of President Joseph Biden to place restrictions on RISC-V to prevent China from benefiting from the technology as it attempts to develop its semiconductor industry.

https://thechinaproject.com/2023/10/13/u-s-bar-on-chinese-us...

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China’s Use of Foreign Open-Source Software, and How to Counter It - April 2, 2024

> Democratic governments also need to reassess which products should not be made open-source because they’re at risk of being weaponized by malign actors.

https://chinaobservers.eu/chinas-use-of-foreign-open-source-...

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Whatever the US did, Europe would do. Anybody in the US or Europe working on a FOSS project with Chinese contributors that they're friendly with? Has anything happened recently?

TianYancha is a corporate data aggregation website, it has nothing to do with FOSS. Your post is such a clumsy attempt to steer the conversation into Anti-Americanism/Westernism. Like really blatant lol.

Okay yeah appears to be heavily geolocked. Still a lot of information otherwise.

They open sourced it and you can self hosted. I mean, does it even matter where they are from? Why it’s automatically suspicious when you know the authors are Chinese.

True the origin does not matter, but it would be better to have more transparency about the contributors even if it's an open source tool. Because you can still get injected with a malicious code when an update is pushed.

But I agree we should not categorize according to geolocation, but more transparency would be better irrespective of the location in any project.

It's this D and Vanessa - I think this might be Nicknames. But I don't see how they should be more transparent.

They also have a forum and they answer quite quickly

There is source code. Investigate it, don't be a lazy bum.

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