If you look at my GitHub profile[1] you'll see that the majority of my time is spent on open source. But my priority is open sourcing the tools and libraries I would want if I were building an alternative to Obsidian (Defuddle, JSON Canvas, Web Clipper, Importer, Flexoki, etc) because I believe all software is ephemeral and that files matter more than apps[2].
Obsidian is a free app made by seven people. If we were purely financially-motivated there are many levers we could have pulled, e.g. adding feature gates, not allowing alternatives to our paid services into the official directory, etc. But as I wrote in the tweet linked above, I have spent decades making open source projects and those have never paid the bills. So yes, there is some financial motivation behind that decision.
If you look at my GitHub profile[1] you'll see that the majority of my time is spent on open source. But my priority is open sourcing the tools and libraries I would want if I were building an alternative to Obsidian (Defuddle, JSON Canvas, Web Clipper, Importer, Flexoki, etc) because I believe all software is ephemeral and that files matter more than apps[2].
Obsidian is a free app made by seven people. If we were purely financially-motivated there are many levers we could have pulled, e.g. adding feature gates, not allowing alternatives to our paid services into the official directory, etc. But as I wrote in the tweet linked above, I have spent decades making open source projects and those have never paid the bills. So yes, there is some financial motivation behind that decision.
[1]: https://github.com/kepano
[2]: https://stephango.com/file-over-app