Hey everyone, was just trying to get an idea of what people thought of this / is it worth making?
A pwa, offline first document based application like logseq or obsidian that is also realtime collaborative and federated
I started off with the idea that I want to have something that I can sync between my devices but also I don’t want to deal with. A private company that can ultimately just change their privacy policy and own my shit (looking at you notion and todoist). But also I don’t really find joy in having to host my own servers either, so maybe that could be solved with federation? Host my stuff on one server and if I stop agreeing with the ideas of mthe current host I can just pick up my account and move it to another server all while still being able to share and collaborate on notes.
I’ve been getting kind of discouraged though more recently because its a pretty massive endeavor and there are just so many applications that seem to be doing mostly the same thing ( aside from sync / federation / realtime collaborative) everything is missing at least one it seems.
So I guess my question is, is this worth continuing to work on? Is this something that anyone else wants? Am I just crazy for wanting these very specific things?
Here is my current version (federation doesn’t work yet, and after looking more into logseq I have completely missed the mark on some functionality)
I know that logseq is working on real time collaboration, and they have docs pages on how to share across devices and users without any centralisation or touching their servers
I don’t really know, why it really HAS to be all that. I think that not a lot of people will have those specific set of requirements.
Also I really dislike the section about “solving not wanting to self host by making it federated” that is not how that works. Please host stuff yourself. Please support those who host your stuff. This part makes you sound cheap and stupid.
I do support those who host stuff but I’d much rather donate to a community run solution like Lemmy.world than do it myself, I know there are people who enjoy doing it and are much better at managing infra than I am.
Edit: also I think Lemmy / mastadon having servers that anyone can join has really lowered the bar to entry and helped drive engagement.
People always mention nextcloud when it comes to syncing for e.g., Obsidian, but how do people use it with mobile? They never seem to actually use the local storage for anything, meaning you can’t map a local folder for use in the application (assuming it does not have the option to use cloud services). I know thay syncthing does use actual local folders, but doesn’t it use a fuck-ton of battery? I remember trying it a few years back and just could not due to it being a battery hog. Also tried the fork which helped but not by much.
I wish I could just use rsync but nooooo. Yes yes rooting is “possible”, which might just break shit or you need to use some masking to hide root from application to and jesus christ why the fuck is everything so annoyingly locked down god dammit. Rant over.
Defaults. And I have a vps set up as an encrypted sync target because all my devices aren’t necessarily on and with a network connection at the same time.
That seems like quite a large endavour. And I’m always a fan of alternatives.
One thing I do not fully understand is the, I do not want to selfhost so its federated. Somebody needs to host in the end, why can’t it be you?
I could host but I also want people to be able to use it if they don’t want to, I feel like requiring people to host mastadon or Lemmy would really raise the bar to entry
The primary reason I want federation is, if I self host it and let other people join then I ultimately control their data and they are locked in, so it could eventually turn into the same centralized authoritarian bs that notion / todoist has and probably most other proprietary stuff.
Activity pub is the only current answer to centralization I’ve seen so far
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I know that logseq is working on real time collaboration, and they have docs pages on how to share across devices and users without any centralisation or touching their servers
Doesn’t Nextcloud do all this?
I don’t really know, why it really HAS to be all that. I think that not a lot of people will have those specific set of requirements.
Also I really dislike the section about “solving not wanting to self host by making it federated” that is not how that works. Please host stuff yourself. Please support those who host your stuff. This part makes you sound cheap and stupid.
I do support those who host stuff but I’d much rather donate to a community run solution like Lemmy.world than do it myself, I know there are people who enjoy doing it and are much better at managing infra than I am.
Edit: also I think Lemmy / mastadon having servers that anyone can join has really lowered the bar to entry and helped drive engagement.
I do currently host the backend
People always mention nextcloud when it comes to syncing for e.g., Obsidian, but how do people use it with mobile? They never seem to actually use the local storage for anything, meaning you can’t map a local folder for use in the application (assuming it does not have the option to use cloud services). I know thay syncthing does use actual local folders, but doesn’t it use a fuck-ton of battery? I remember trying it a few years back and just could not due to it being a battery hog. Also tried the fork which helped but not by much.
I wish I could just use rsync but nooooo. Yes yes rooting is “possible”, which might just break shit or you need to use some masking to hide root from application to and jesus christ why the fuck is everything so annoyingly locked down god dammit. Rant over.
Havant tried termux + rsync tho.
I don’t use obsidian. I use Joplin. It has nextcloud integration and works flawlessly.
For the rest (e.g. Tasks, Collaborate Office) I use DAVx5 and the nextcloud App to sync.
Oh yeah if it is integrated into the application then it’s much easier for sure.
I’m using syncthing for logseq and koreader with unrestricted battery use on grapheneos, and my phone says it has used less than 1% of battery.
Really? Hmm interesting. Maybe I should take another peek at syncthing. Default settings or have you limited the sync frequency?
Defaults. And I have a vps set up as an encrypted sync target because all my devices aren’t necessarily on and with a network connection at the same time.
Interesting, thanks!
I run nextcloud in a docker container and its super unstable, and I haven’t found a good way of using it on mobile
nextcloud can become very frustrating with such apps due to file conflicts.
I’ve been using nextcloud for years without any problems
lucky you, i had nothing but problems… maybe different usage pattern
What do you suspect the issue can be? Some sources not syncing causing multiple divergences?
That seems like quite a large endavour. And I’m always a fan of alternatives. One thing I do not fully understand is the, I do not want to selfhost so its federated. Somebody needs to host in the end, why can’t it be you?
I could host but I also want people to be able to use it if they don’t want to, I feel like requiring people to host mastadon or Lemmy would really raise the bar to entry
The primary reason I want federation is, if I self host it and let other people join then I ultimately control their data and they are locked in, so it could eventually turn into the same centralized authoritarian bs that notion / todoist has and probably most other proprietary stuff.
Activity pub is the only current answer to centralization I’ve seen so far
I think this is where Anytype (https://anytype.io/) is headed!
Woah any type looks awesome
There’s prior art on this: https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
If you want to step up and maintain it… It’s written in Clojure though.