Is Obsidian a good tool to use for writing technical manuals? I would like to write an Operation Manual for municipality’s water system. There will be embedded screenshots and some links to other sections of the document.
Ideally we could “publish” to offline html. The customer would also like a printed manual.
If Obsidian is no good, I would love suggestions on software you have used to write short manuals with pictures, preferably not Word.
No. I mean the following: "Commercial Use Licenses are required whenever Obsidian is being used for work for a business with two or more personnel. Sole proprietorships or other one-person organizations do not require a Commercial Use License. Work for educational purposes does not require a Commercial Use License.
Commercial Use Licenses must be purchased on an annual and per user basis. Commercial users must purchase at least as many licenses as the number of people who will be using Obsidian.
You may use Obsidian commercially for free for 14 days to evaluate the app before purchase."
see: https://obsidian.md/license
Hm. I keep notes in Obsidian, including work notes. I wonder if that violates the license. I might abandon Obsidian over this.
This requires a commercial license. If your work does not meet few exceptions mentioned in the text I quoted above.
Sorry for bad news …
Eh. Theoretically, maybe. Practically, this is a problem of ‘what constitutes work use’.
In my opinion, the work notes I take in obsidian are my personal notes. I found obsidian myself, and use it myself for taking notes for work. Stuff doesn’t get shared to coworkers, other than the actual text I am writing when I copy paste it out of obsidian.
OP’s use case is a work use, in my opinion, as they are using obsidian to produce the output used for work.
Same would apply if a team used obsidian for notes, encouraged use of it for everyone in the team, and/or uses shared vaults as a ‘wiki’.
I also see the definition of “work use” rather fuzzy. I have discussed this on Reddit some time ago. And conclusion was: if it is somehow work related you need a license, does matter if you share your voult or on not.
Practically, obsidian does not hunt for people who use the soft without a proper license.
On the other hand obsidian is developed by 2 people, I believe 3 now.
Btw, your employer most probably will disagree with your definition of personal notes as well and the fact that you install obsidian on a work hardware.
Actually, my employer honestly does not care. My department specifically uses unmanaged devices, which we’re also explicitly allowed to use privately. The data on them is ours, we are encouraged to encrypt it with a personal key. ‘Non-personal’ data is stored on onedrive or our own gitlab instance.
But I agree with you that most employers would :)
It’s bad news for Obsidian, not me. There’s a million note taking applications out there.
This depends on what do you need form a note taking app. But if your needs are covered by many - great you have a big list to choose from.
Man, now I have to go from championing Obsidian to warning people away from it. That sucks.
@effingjoe @hutchmcnugget @gelberhut what?! Why?!
What are you talking about?! How is commercial licensing of an indie product something to warn people about? Maybe start by warning people of Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, SAP, because their licensing models are horrendously exploitive.
You are just frustrated that your entitlement for a free product was not satisfied. Your reaction to vent against Obsidian and by that its Dev Team is bizarre.
Because my work notes are personal as far as I’m concerned. If my employer was telling everyone to use Obsidian that would be a different story. Their scope is too wide, and yes, it’s frustrating. Not to mention, the core obsidian application is lackluster at best; it’s the plugins that really make it stand out. How much of the money goes to plugin creators?
Just scummy all around.
This is not personal use. This is commercial use.
In that case your employer would need to provide you with a license.
If Obsidian is lackluster, then why even complain about its licensing model. Just move on to another programm.
I don’t know and I don’t think it matters. Plugin creators frequently provide donation methods on their sites. I also don’t believe that Obsidian is as profitable as you might think. I don’t think the income generated through licensing covers what the Dev team actually puts in in terms of work, although I don’t have any figures on that.
This is also a poor attempt at moving the goal post. You just realized that you are not behaving ethically… and instead of sucking up to it and either paying 50$/year for a commercial license or moving on to another product (which most definitely has a licensing model as well) you are hating on an indie software dev team. Go and play with OneNote.
How is that bad news for Obsidian? The creators don’t care that you don’t use their product if you are not willing to pay for it. What a strange way to frame it like Obsidian Dev Team would need to woo you to use their product by giving it to you for free or something like that. Bizarre.
Those have commercial licensing requirements as well. The issue is not Obsidian, but your intent on commercial use. Obsidian actually has very generous terms btw: free for education, private use and freelance. Compare that to the license requirement of any other common software you use.
A vast majority don’t care how any individual uses them. They put collaboration features behind a paywall, but they also host the data. I liked the idea of hosting my files myself, which is what makes this all the more ridiculous. What extra cost does Obsidian incur whether I take a note about a book I read or I take a note about a meeting I was in?
You miss the point. The same argument could be brought forth against any other commercial license, like MS Office. But you are right, the answer is: none and I consider myself a FOSS advocate, but this is not the world we live in. Obsidian Dev Team puts in work and for them to be able to continue doing so, they need compensation, it’s work after all.
Most software doesn’t even differentiate between private and commercial use or let’s you pay for both, but makes private use cheaper. What obligation does Obsidian suddenly have to be free for commercial use? It’s already free for private use, educational purposes and even for freelance work. If someone is making money using a tool, then why is it ridiculous to pay for the tool?
Are you serious? I explained it in the comment you replied to.
No, you didn’t or I counter-argued and you seem to not have understood my question in the new context that I provided.
@gelberhut @effingjoe if I am a freelancer who gets paid for work done using #obsidian this doesn’t apply. Correct me if I’m wrong.
I see same text as you. As @EpiphanicSynchronicity@pkm.social] already mentioned, it looks like you are working in an organization which includes less then 2 people. Your customers are not your employer.
@tamowafy @gelberhut @effingjoe AFAIK you need to be working in a for-profit organization with 2 or more employees to need a commercial license for #Obsidian.
Agree.
@EpiphanicSynchronicity @tamowafy @gelberhut @effingjoe “the use of OBSIDIAN for the exercise of your own trade or profession for which you are compensated compensation (e.g. teamwork with colleagues, writing work reports, etc.) does not qualify as Personal Use”
Please provide a link to the quote.
@gelberhut Sorry, should have done that: https://obsidian.md/terms
Thanks! Strange that they did not put this in FAQ.