[hkh28]

As several people have pointed out, both the "Personal" and "Catalyst" licenses are intended for personal use only, making this quite an expensive product should I want to use it for work as well. But in the full license text, there seems to be an even more problematic phrasing:

> The use of OBSIDIAN for the exercise of your own trade or profession (...) does not qualify as personal use.

I would interpret this to mean that I as a developer can not use this to exercise the "trade" of software development. That would in turn mean that I can not use this to make notes of stuff I learn on my own time, if it is related to software development.

I would imagine most people not caring about this kind of license limitation, but it would be interesting if it was intended this way, or if this is just me being bad at licenses.

[Reelin]

If we're internet armchair lawyering then I'd point out that a carpenter building something is "exercising their trade or profession" but a carpenter reading a textbook or watching a how-to video is not.

Analogously, a salaried software developer learning something and taking notes on their own time would be in the clear but a freelance developer tracking their projects or clients would be in violation.

What's not clear is how it applies to a salaried developer learning something and taking notes on the job (ie is time provided for professional development part of practicing your trade or merely a perk?) or a freelance developer using this product at all (same issue as previous scenario, except now it's not even clear where your job ends and personal time begins).

[GuiA]

What about a carpenter testing out new techniques in their garage and taking notes as they go - are they exercising their trade?

[ddrdrck_]

Commercial license is 50$ per year. Not even 5 bucks per month. I do not think this qualifies as "expensive", especially if you intend to use it for work related stuff

[colinjoy]

If you are going to use it as a knowledge base, you are probably looking at a few years of use.

Currently the closest match to this software I have installed is Quiver. Let’s compare costs over a period of 5 years:

Quiver: $9.99 Obsidian: $250.00

That may not be a lot of money to you personally, but it fits my mental model of “expensive” pretty well.

[prepend]

I disagree. $50 for note taking app only is expensive compared to something like Google Docs which does much more functionality and includes cloud storage.

The product is applicable to anyone who needs a knowledge base so it’s $50/employee and that adds up quickly.

While the developer is free to charge whatever they like, I don’t like the trend of these products priced based on people thinking $50 isn’t that much and that spiraling into what should be a one time fee to every piece of software being $50/year forever.

This reminds me of the 4 hour workweek where there’s a plan to create recurring streams of revenue for little to no work.

I think the amount of time put into this product doesn’t warrant that price. Even though I think it’s a really neat product.

[fao_]

I mean, if you're in a software job, sure. But in total for a year, it's almost 1 month worth of rent in the city that's close to me.

[ericax]

Hi there! Sorry it's our first time doing a license like this.

If I understand correctly, licenses are usually written more strictly for legal purposes, but in my opinion your use case sounds like it should belong to personal use.

If anyone has pointers for us to make the license text more clear, please let me know!

[_frkl]

I would not write my own license. I'd really recommend you get a lawyer look over the text you have (that shouldn't be too expensive, it's a one time cost), or look at existing ones that are actually written by lawyers. For a public license (to restrict commercial use), I'd recommend both LicenseZero Prosperity ( https://prosperitylicense.com/versions/3.0.0 ) and the Polyform licenses ( https://polyformproject.org/ ).

For the private license, you could use/adapt the LicenseZero Private license ( https://licensezero.com/licenses/private ).

Those are more geared towards developer tools, so I'm not sure whether they'd be a good fit for your product. But all of them are written in simple to understand language so you should be able to figure that out by youself, and at the very least get a few pointers. If not, that is considered a bug with the license, and both projects are very open to feedback.

[Xophmeister]

Licenses are written by people versed in the appropriate laws. That’s why they come across as “more strict”, for precision’s sake. However, one should be very careful about trying to emulate legal precision just by virtue of stricter language.

[Reelin]

> licenses are usually written more strictly for legal purposes

Well written legal documents are precise (not strict). The trouble is that you haven't unambiguously defined what qualifies as personal use, and there are a rather large number of obvious edge cases. This is a good example of something that should be drafted by a qualified attorney.

[ncallaway]

As a feedback from me: the license doesn't leave any room for evaluation on the commercial side.

90% of the notes I generate are for my business, and probably ~10% of my notes are for personal stuff. The volume of personal notes isn't enough to be worth having my notes separated out while I trial Obsidian. Since I can't put any of my commercial notes in it without paying for it, I'm just giving up trying it.

If Obsidian works well for me, I'd definitely consider putting down $50/year for it. The price seems a little high to me, but if it works well, then I'd probably do it. But the license doesn't let me evaluate it, so I won't be able to find out if it works well for me. $50/year is way too high for me to put down to see if I like it.

A 14-day or 30-day evaluation period in the commercial license text would be really helpful to letting me see if Obsidian works for me.

[crooked-v]

The simple answer is: don't write your own software license, because if you're not a lawyer (or if you're a lawyer not specialized in this area of law), you'll get it wrong.