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Comment by grishka | Hacker News Reader

Definitely that, a finite scope is good and finished software is beautiful.

But also, most of the modern software is in what I call "eternal beta". The assumption that your users always have an internet connection creates a perverse incentive structure where "you can always ship an update", and in most cases there's one singular stream of updates so new features (that no one asked for btw) and bug fixes can't be decoupled. In case of web services like YouTube you don't get to choose the version you use at all.

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I moved to Obsidian after Evernote increased their subscription prices beyond the point I could justify and I think Obsidian is heading down the same path Evernote did. They keep adding more and more features to it when I wish they would call it complete and move it into maintenance mode.

For me, the turning point for Obsidian was their Canvas feature. That was a big move beyond the initial design of it being an excellent editor for a directory or markdown files that supported links and all the other cool things you can do with a basic directory of files and a few conventions. Nothing proprietary, nothing much beyond the directory of files aside from a preferences store. IMHO, Canvas and beyond should have been a new product.

If Obsidian was open source I would have been tempted to fork it at that point.

Joplin is open source but isn't half of Obsidian, it's slow and grouchy, a fairly poor Electron app, but at least I can turn off the plugin that does freehand drawing. It's also has self-hosted sync for free. If Obsidian was open source, I'd have switched already even if it needed a subscription to sync, especially if I could toggle off unwanted features.

> beyond the point I could justify

Your accountant was calling you at late hours asking you what the hell was going on with your note taking expenses?

My accountant, being myself, insists that I justify subscriptions. Prices rise, value drops, and I hate paying for unused feature bloat.

all men must answer to themselves

The issue is that a finite scope is paid once (and often pirated, so not even that), while subscription SaaS are paid perpetually, so there's more money there.

We should have a system where we continue paying for software that we keep using even if it doesn't change, but that's never going to happen, we will start wondering how we will replace it and cut costs.

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