silicon VS obsidian-releases

It's nowhere near as featureful as Outline, but I wrote my own Markdown knowledge base thingy in Python. It is web-based and geared toward single-user (or _very_ small team use) but it's Apache licensed and has no commercial tie-ins. Super easy to deploy as long as you know how to layer some rudimentary authentication on top of it.

https://github.com/cu/silicon

I wrote my own note-keeping system[0] and very much wanted all of the notes to just be markdown files on the disk. It turns out that there are trade-offs to this. If you want plaintext markdown files on disk AND want fancy features like file versioning, a search index, tags, etc then you need to store all of that metadata somewhere and you're down writing a half-assed implementation of a DBMS.

Now, you can certainly bite the bullet and full-ass the implementation like Dokuwiki did, but that is really quite a lot of work and effort against simply `import sqlite` and writing a couple of tutorial-level queries. And it turns out that exporting all of your documents to plaintext, if you should so choose, is a one-line command away.

[0]: https://github.com/cu/silicon

I wrote my own. It's a web app but one of its features is that it doesn't have many features. https://github.com/cu/silicon

It doesn't have folders and tags, but if that's not a deal-breaker you could check out https://github.com/cu/silicon

Not sure which features you're looking for, but you could try this thing I wrote: https://github.com/cu/silicon

3. Very occasionally, I will click on a link on one page to go to another page.

And what would be the point of categorizing all my notes? Every single time I go to my wiki, it's to either write down something specific or search for something specific. I have _never_ wanted to see a list of all of my pages about programming languages for example. Or every page tagged "bash".

I think as software engineers building our own tools, we sometimes build features because they sound interesting and we know how to do it, or because the project doesn't "feel" complete without them. Not because we'll ever actually use them.

When I _do_ want to break up a large subject (e.g. Python) into multiple pages, I just create one "Python" page and link to all of the others from that page.

The one concession I've made to categorization/organization is that I've added a feature where two pages can be marked as "related" to one another. This is mainly to avoid having a manually-edited "See Also" section on pages that touch upon topics covered on other pages.

[1]: https://github.com/cu/silicon

The closest editor that follows our first principle is Obsidian editor:

The solution was already installed on both my computer and my phone: Obsidian.

> why does open source need to "win"

Open source does not need to win.

But your ability to be in control of your computer needs to be preserved. A proprietary fridge cannot control your diet, while a proprietary App Store can control what software you install on YOUR phone (unless you live in EU, hello DMA!). The tail wags the dog, so to speak. Proprietary software has also been shown to break user workflows or remove functions in an update while leaving users with no choice whatsoever.

One alternative to having open source win is to ensure software must come with a robust warranty and other assurances you expect from the things you buy. EU's CRA will make software vulnerabilities in WiFi routers covered by warranty, for example.

You can also ensure robust and interoperable data storage options. For example, https://obsidian.md/ stores all notes in Markdown, not holding the data hostage in case users will not like how future versions will work. GDPR actually has a provision for data portability (Art. 20), but it does not seem to have a requisite effect on the industry yet.

And until the above issues are solved, open source remains the best way to ensure that a software tail cannot wag your computer dog.

[2] https://obsidian.md/

So I've had my fair share of personal websites and blogs. I have built them on stacks ranging from the most basic HTML and CSS, to hosted frameworks like Wordpress and Laravel, to the more modern single page applications built in Vue and React. For a simple content blog I think you can't go wrong with a Static Site Generator though. These days I am almost exclusively writing everything in Obsidian. Which is great because its all in standard markdown format. This allows for a really neat and easy content publishing workflow.

Consider making an Obsidian[^1] plugin, or writing to Obsidian-compatible Markdown files :)

[^1]: https://obsidian.md/

Obsidian is a writing application created to allow for offline / private note taking in markdown format, in an interface that looks a lot like our regular programming IDE. It is very flexible, with a good collection of community plugins that you can use to customize Obsidian to your heart contents.

Obsidian support via our Obsidian Plugin