The future of Anytype is unclear — that much is now clear

Talk Lounge
1

If you follow one of the most important parts of the September 2026 Town Hall - namely, “What’s Next” - it becomes clear that Anytype’s future is essentially unpredictable.
And that’s not a reassuring outlook, neither for existing users nor for potential new users of Anytype.

https://youtu.be/qMyiiJP9R7I?t=5046

“What happens next depends on you, the community, and how you choose to support these products.”

At the same time, the possibility of a lifetime membership is held out — a rather ambitious prospect for a split product with two unclear roadmaps. In fact, it is explicitly stated that there isn’t even a clear roadmap for the new product.
“Once the roadmap of the new product is clearer, we will make a detailed update to Anytype’s roadmap as well”.

So uncertainty is by design here. Not a good foundation for using a PKM tool, in my opinion.

2

I agree and this is why for the time being I could not recomment Anytype anymore sadly…

We have one product, Anytype, reaching basicly its end of life and the new product, AnyTwo, that is in early alpha. How can I in good conscience recommend this to people to put hours/money into? :frowning:

I also don’t like this quote:

“What happens next depends on you, the community, and how you choose to support these products.”

This puts all responsibility on the community, who have no insights what is needed to keep the products alive.

For example if I want Anytype (current version) to keep being supported I pay for a subscription, but I have no insights if that will be enough! Are there enough paying members to keep it alive and supported? Only the team knows this, not the users.

So it is an uncertain gamble from my perspective on both time and money for a system I rely on personal or for work.

And I really hate this to be honest, I don’t want to be uncertain about Anytype, I don’t want to be pessimistic and have these concerns. The vision, the basics and the team are really awesome and I really want to see them succeed from day one, when I tried Anytype 6 years ago!

In the current world we need an app like Anytype/Anytwo to be honest!

From my perspective I see only one way and that is for the team to make decisions for themself! Just say, Anytype is no longer supported ones AnyTwo releases in stable state. All subscriptions/perks carry over from Anytype to Anytwo when you choose to migrate. Perhaps if storage/memberships revamp is needed give existing users a discount to transition or something.

This would give a clear direction, this would give faith in the product and specially support their current users.

3

Guys,
from my point of view, we should welcome the giant step the team did here!

It was an enormous brave decision from the team to code the whole thing completely new from sctrach!
AnyTwo is not just an upgrade, also not only a very big upgrade. It is new code!

To make such a decision was really brave.
No one comes up with such an idea to spend this amount of work and time into a project if it isn’t clearly the best solution on the long run, to finally overcome all the thousand little flaws from that we suffer since the beginning, every day!

Let’s be honest: although we all love Anytype “in principle”, it is full of flaws that are not fixable while staying with the old code base. The flaws are too deep.
It’s like a completely tangled and tousled string made from cotton, full of wild knots everywhere, while the cotton became wet and rotten over the years.
You simply can’t untangle that string and expect to get a flawless and strong string from that mess.

My time here started three years ago and I was reluctant first, because at this time, Anytype was horrible and I’ve thought more then once that the whole thing need a rebuilt from ground on.

Yeah, Razor fixed bugs day and night (that often magically reappeared again and again) and put new features on top of everything, but that never solved the problems with the rotten foundation.
Users that come from Notion often praises Anytype’s “speed”. But I come from “local only” Apps and compare to them, Anytype is as slow as a snail!
How often did characters or even whole words disappear or magically even rearrange themself, simply by typing too “fast”?
The team tried often to do something against that, but with less success then expected and needed.
That’s a clear indicator for problems that are too deep in the structure to become fixed.
Only new concepts for the whole underlying fundamten could ever change that situation and that needs new code.
– REALLY new code, not just some fixes here and there, no, really NEW code!
Not only some “new code” on top of everything and not only some parts of new code here and there in the already totally tangled thing.
No, really a new code base was the needed thing.
– That was the only thing that could make Anytype fit for surviving in the future.

The new name reflects that. AnyTwo is not just an upgrade. It is NEW code, based on the gathered knowledge, based on experience, based on looking with polished glasses on the whole.

What should a company do at this point when that became clear?
In the past, they’ve really tried to fix the tangled string. They implemented a new database and so on, expecting and announcing, now could/would the speed of the development finally accelerate. But as we all know, it wasn’t the case. These attempts to fix the whole by replacing some of its parts wasn’t enough to get a really new and better situation.

What should a company do at such a point?
I can only imagine what has happen internally.
You have a small team with limited capacities. The users complain every day about the slow speed of the development and the tons of bugs.
Razor was working day & night, but it wasn’t enough.
Then (I imagine so) there was some guys with fresh new ideas. I can well imagine the internal tensions …

At some point (so my imagination) came the decision from the founders: “Let’s give the new guys a chance”. The development of Anytype became decelerated to get more capacities to try in parallel to rebuilt the whole thing. It the result looks promising after some weeks (months), then we will go this way and switch to the new code.
But at the same time, the complaining (and sometimes paying) users need some “food”. They want to see progress. Internal, it was still not clear if the parallel developed new code is really able to become the new foundation and it was therefore too early to announce it openly that there is something in the bush.

It must have been clear to the team, that the unpatient users would recognize the even decelerated speed of the normal development. But what to do?
So, “eys closed and through”!
That was, IMHO, the only way out of the dilemma. And this is what they did.
Each other way would have caused more harm.

You can never come out of a dilemma without some wounds. You can only chose how to come out in the best way with as less wounds as possible.
But there will always be guys that look like horses with blinders at the sustained wounds and complain that “another” way would have been “clearly” better.
But these horses don’t see the whole picture, because of their binders.

What we have seen in the Town Hall was more then promising!
I, for my part, will help the team as much as I can, by doing my Bug Detective duty!
This is what I can do.
Others can help in another way, for example by paying a membership etc.
– This is what really helps the team!
Anytype is not Santa Claus who brings us gifts for free again and again and again.
There are no magical dwarfs in the north pole that make the presents out of nothing without any own needs.

I read all the time comments here in the forum, about the membership planes and that “they” should give us X gigabyte of space for free, and so on.
But I say some words to guys who write such things: “If you think that “they” should do that, why don’t YOU give X GB of space to others for free?”
You could, for example, send some money to the company and say “for that money, simply sponsor free space to your users!”
– Why did something like that seemingly never happen?

Anytype is more or less Open Source (or, at least, “code available”.
Therefore, we all should see it as OUR project!
What do I mean with that? – I mean with that, that each of us should think about what he/she himself/herself can do for OUR beloved project!

It was the founders that brought the stone into rolling some years ago.
It’s always easy to complain that the rolling stone isn’t round enough to roll freely without bumping and so on.
But what can “you” do to help the founders and the team, to get the stone more round?

Again: it was a brave step to built a completely new code base. That isn’t an indicator for a project that’s on the edge of failing. It’s the opposite. It was necessary to make the thing ready to survive, no matter what the future brings.
The old code, although it more or less works, was a dead end; that clear since years!
But they will still bring some updates and fixes here and there, but on the long run, it’s necessary to switch to the new code.
And I’m very happy about that!

The end of the year, when AnyTwo is expected to become released, sounds far away, but let’s be realistic: we are already in the end of September! We speak about only 3-4 months! That time will go fast.
And I believe, they will hold the promise this time. New developers plus the help of modern AI coding, plus an actual state that already looks more then promising, makes me confident about that.
Meanwhile, each of us should think about what he/she can do to help!

4

And don’t forget what @kaye said here:

To me, that is a good perspective.

5

@Code-Jack is right that if we want this vision and software to succeed we should all be pitching in to help where we can. We shouldn’t just be complaining that things aren’t happening in our imagined timeline. We should be offering to provide feedback where requested, testing where able, making videos and promotional content on our socials, and encouraging the developers when the path forward seems unclear. We’re pioneers to a phenomenal new PKM software, and we should happily act like it! Much love AnyCommunity <3.

6

Thanks for starting this thread and I’m happy for people to continue voicing their thoughts.

I’ve tried to various approaches in outlining the situation in other threads, but maybe I should go for the most candid and direct here. Please don’t see this as anything other than me trying to be clear so people can get the answers they need to make the decisions they need. I don’t want anybody to feel in limbo because we’re dragging them along.

True. This is the truth and there’s no way around this. Anytype becomes fully open source, which means that anything can happen to it—which is unpredictable. We are committed heavily to Anytwo and believe it is the future. If this level of unpredictability does not match your needs, I recommend migrating to a more established application with more predictable futures.

This isn’t framed accurately, there aren’t two paths: certain and uncertain, and we chose ‘uncertain’. The situation is uncertain not by design, but my the nature of the situation itself. We’ve transparently communicated that Anytype is a startup, building technology that does not exist on the planet today (cannot emphasise this anymore than I already have), is not profitable today, and the product has not left beta. Since the very beginning of building local-first software (which did not exist), Anytype has always been on uncertain grounds proving this works and people want it.

If this situation is not offering enough certainty, I believe it really is the best choice for people to use another more mature app from a more stable company. You can always check-in on us again in the future—this way, it’s of no loss to you. Once we’re in a state that matches your needs, you can choose what you want to do. Again, I totally understand that this level of uncertainty is undesirable for you and others.

With the release of our new Any-block v2, migrating away should be better too. We have no desire to lock anybody in.

Yes, and we believe this is a great thing. We have a good picture of what the product roadmap should be internally, but that shouldn’t be the final roadmap. The community of users should help drive the roadmap, even if we’re ultimately making the decisions, because their input truly matters.

If this level of uncertainty and transparency from our team is uncomfortable, then it really does mean we’re a poor match for your needs. It doesn’t make us right and others wrong. It just means we’ve picked our path, communicated it, given reasons, and people need to choose if they’re onboard or not.

I’ll reiterate the points as factually as possible:

  • Like any business, we need to be net positive in cash in order to continue building the product.
  • Anytype, as a product, is currently fully self-sustainable thanks to 2% of its users that pays for memberships that supports the other 98% of free users. If nothing changes, Anytype will theoretically run indefinitely as is. In other words, if nothing changes today, you as a free user can forever use Anytype. If the company goes down, you can still keep the software, self-host, or take the open-source project in your own hands. You never lose your data or access to software. This is something that other cloud companies cannot offer, even in death. :stuck_out_tongue:
  • In order to keep the train moving forward, like for any company, it needs engaged customers and community. This means paying customers and community that contributes in non-financial ways—advocacy, bug reports, etc.
  • We have shifted our internal resources primarily to Anytwo, because this is our bet for the future. And we want to get the product out as fast as possible. One developer is on Anytype today. We have explained the reasons in other threads.

Why do we say, “what happens next depends on you?”

  • This exact conversation represents the point I’m making on a meta level. Our announcement of Anytwo could have been taken many different ways.
  • One reaction is expressed in this forum thread: “This feels unstable, I want to jump ship.” That’s totally fair enough. If everybody did that today, Anytype would die in an instant.
  • Another reaction: “This feels exciting, I’m onboard with this journey.” That’s a crazy decision. And I’m so grateful that so many of our community has reacted this way—even buying memberships.

If my message was not clear: what happens to every business is ultimately always at the hands of its customer base. Anytype in particularly so because it will become fully open source. Nothing that we said is actually new, even if we were blunt. Without paying members, the story ends. No two ways about it.

We have expressed this in clear terms in the past, but I’ll say it again here: if every daily active user of Anytype (not even every user) was to become a paying member today, the company would be instantly profitable. If you’re a daily user, it’s clear you value the product. But because only 2% of all users pay, the company is not profitable.

To be clear, we love being able to support free users. But we also love building products that people use, and that requires paying members.

True. There’s really nothing else that needs to be expressed: if you want a startup to succeed, you should become a customer. If you don’t want the risk (fair enough), then become a customer of an established company. You are making a gamble, and maybe you should stop. Don’t listen to us, listen to your needs and risk profile.

We try to avoid making so many definitive promises due the understandable reaction from community members on broken promises. Nonetheless, we’ve already stated our intentions clearly.

Your story was a very exciting read, and it’s so fascinating what the outside-in perspective must be like. Maybe if all goes well, in the distant future we can do a documentary of the ‘early days’ of Anytype and what we all went through. :stuck_out_tongue: It wouldn’t be a boring documentary, that’s for sure.

We have been able to build features at an unprecedented rate thanks to our new infrastructure and its ability to be workable with AI coding tools. It’s been magical for us internally. It’s very hard to express this to non-technical people how much of a change we’ve made, but we hope the product will do that for itself later on.

If we knew it would be as ‘well-received’ as it has been, honestly I would have lost a lot less sleep. The support has been really invigorating for our team. So thank you, really, for all the kind words.

While I’m not a lover of complaints, I do emphasise with them and understand where they’re coming from. At the same time, we’re doing our best and cannot change many things out of our control. If that’s not good enough, then there’s not much else that can be done.

Thank you. I really appreciate that. On a personal level, I want to look back at my own time and say—I played my part in making that movement towards more digitally empowering software happen. The enshittification of everything really hurts the soul.

7

While painful for everyone I approve moving away from AT, the current architecture faults are too much.

I personally am a bit concerned about AI e though.

I’m a software dev and have tried coding agents, I’m not impressed by them.

I believe AT development heavily relied on agents, I saw the hallmark signs like strange and unexpected bugs and regressions, saw some references to claude in the codebase (haven’t looked much into it so I might be wrong but the sentiment stands).

I’d like to know the type of AI usage there will be on A2, is the architecture ideated by a human who uses some AI to find sources to research/debug, or are we letting AI come up with architecture/solutions, testing them and signing off on them?

I ask this because I know AI can come up with some nice and performant one-off solutions, but it very much struggles with evolving software in the long run.

I’d hate having to hard migrate to an AnyThree a couple years from now.

8

Yes, that’s clear. I don’t think it needs to be emphasized that much.
I just don’t agree with everything the team does, and I take the freedom to express my opinion.
I’m still a paying member and have been actively involved with Anytype for years.
The fact that we’re all riding a dead horse now is a very unpleasant experience, and it’s not the users’ fault.

9

I’m not sure if this implication here is that you’re saying this is our fault. While I don’t know how this productively changes anything, I would add a couple of points.

People who have used Anytype in the past, and continue to do so, have gained value from the product—regardless if they’ve paid or not. Just because Anytype is evolving, it doesn’t erase the value that one has already received from the product—and continues to receive today. We have people running their companies on Anytype today, so this “dead horse” as you’ve put it still seems to be kicking.

This framing would be the equivalent of saying, “I’m sad I’m riding this dead horse of Windows Vista and I have to migrate onto the next version.” Software becomes legacy and it evolves—because we learn how to make it better. The biggest pain users are inflicted during this experience is a migration if you choose to. We did not take away anybody’s data, access, or experience. You still have it.

Secondarily, I would emphasise that while it’s not a pleasant experience for users, and we’re doing our best to minimise disruption, it is also incredibly unpleasant for us as the builders. We have made considerable sacrifices to get Anytype to where it is, and to have to switch gears to Anytwo doesn’t mean we lose nothing ourselves. In other words, it’s not only users that experience frustration with this situation—which is why we empathise with what’s going on. But we don’t focus on that, because we’ve made the best decision in our eyes based on the situation at hand. Now, we need to focus on what we can control and move forward.

This is not the thread to debate if AI is good for coding, there are plenty of avenues for that where the proper nuance can be taken. The code will be source available, so you can make your own decision on if it’s satisfactory to your standards.

10

I honestly feel it might be a bit too early to jump to so many conclusions right now. Perhaps we should all just wait and observe a little longer, at least until we see more feedback from testers on Anytwo’s test builds and get more concrete details on the data migration solutions.

11

Dear @kaye,

I cannot emphasize enough how deeply I am impressed by your way of communication to the users community.

I think the underlying problem is heavily emotional. Now the future and the music is playing on Anytwo and on another forum that we don’t have any access to. (I’m still not chosen as a tester.) And that feels lonesome and being abandoned.

I know.@code-jack, that three months are nothing for such a project and the end of the year will come sooner as we all think. But it’s like with Christmas: the time until the time comes can get so looooong.

I am eager to help and I want to know what is going on and I want to see stuff and read stuff and feel like being informed.

So why not open the other forum for all non-testers in read only mode? So we can watch you guys working without disturbing you.

Peace!

12

Apologies for not sharing it earlier, we’re not purposefully making it exclusive. Frankly:

  1. I didn’t think it would be very exciting since it’s mostly bug reports. Most conversation actually happens in chat inside Anytwo between us and the testers. Although we’d encourage testers to put stuff on the Quackback, it’s ultimately how each individual operates.
  2. Participating in bug reports, feature requests, voting, and discussions on a product that one has not been able to try yet seems to not have much point.

Regardless, the links are there and you can check it out if you wish.

13

I don’t believe that is is a “fact” that we ride a dead horse.
Although we can not know how the migration will work, I imagine it as an easy process. Only thing is, that it will be in some sense a one way process: once you put new data into AnyTwo, there will no easy way exist to get lots of data from AnyTwo back into Anytype.

For the moment, simply continue to use Anytype as always.
If the time is right for you to migrate, do it. I believe the thing is mostly done by clicking a button (at least, I imagine so).
I expect that the migration of the pure data will be as uncomplicated as possible. So you will find all your data in AnyTwo after that.
Only thing where I expect differences are the Views. It was a lot work for us users to configure all our Collections and Queries, so we will miss them in the first day after the migraton.
But we will soon find out, that the new concepts of displaying data and the navigation in them easily beats our known old concepts. It will be a big win and it will give us much more freedom, as well as a dramatically increased speed while we navigate in our Space or display lots of Objects.

Even though it may cost some days to become deeply familiar with all the new concepts how to use it all, I believe that the benefits will convince you from the first day on.

Of course, all this is just my imagination. But I believe that I got the general idea during the Town Hall.
Our traditional way to think how to manage lots of Objects has become outdated, there is no need anymore to think so much about the “how”.
All these thinking about “should I create a new Collection for these new data? And what Views do I need?” becomes obsolete.

Honestly, Collections was never really needed. No.
Tags plus Queries can fulfill the same purpose.
The whole concept of our known Collections was always outdated, a relikt of a mindset that secretly still thinks in terms of folders in a tree-like structure.
But because Anytype uses a mesh graph underneath all, this concept was in principle outdated since Anytype was born. But we carried this relikt with us all the time that leaded to the paradox that we used Collections and Queries in parallel, although their functions overlap a lot. And this ballast, to manage all the time two separate but mostly overlapping structure organizing tools, has caused us a lot of headache.
Each of us has spent a lot of time (days, weeks) and multiple attempts, till he/she finally found a way that worked for him/her. But it worked never perfect. There was always cases that still didn’t fit well into that all (sometimes caused by Anytype’s limitations here and there). That even increased the headache: “what workaround could maybe help to overcome this bottle neck?”.

For me, the new concept looks a little similar to the difference in freedom if someone switches from an old tree structure to Anytype with its mesh. It’s suddenly a whole new level of freedom.
The step from Anytype to AnyTwo will be a similar big win in freedom.
For me it looks as if we finally really get the benefits that a mesh structure with an underlying database offers.

Anytype has never played out the full potential of that. But AnyTwo will do it.
And, in addition, everything will feel (and be) way faster, then all we ever knew!

A simple example:
Imagine, you get a telephone call from an angry customer and you need to find a bunch of somehow related Objects as quick as possible. For example to see all the recent conversations with that person.
– I know this unpleasant situation only too well!
Anytype was always painful slow in such “emergencies”.
“Where do I have these data? How can I quickly see them all together?”.

AnyTwo uses in principle the same Objects as Anytype. But to find and display related Objects will be done with a relaxed smile within a second.
Why?
– Because the needed “Collection”, that bundles and shows the needed Objects, becomes generated in the second where you need it.
A “Collection” is no longer a stiff thing that you once have manually configured with a lot of brain power.
Instead, it’s a dynamically generated thing that instantaneously appears on demand.

Anytype is not a “dead horse”; nope, it’s the source of data that AnyTwo later uses.
So, simply continue to put your data into Anytype, till the day comes when you migrate.
And I’m pretty sure that you will never look back after that!

.

Do you really have a better idea what the team should have done?
– See it not only from your own perspective, look from an eagle’s point of view, who sees the whole situation.

If you’d got lost in a jungle and a guide led you out, it may well be that the path took you through an area with mosquitoes. It’s easy to blame the guide for that.
But the guide knew that the other paths were full of crocodiles, or full of cannibals. And simply staying where you are is not an option for the future.

14

Oh, and one thing more to say:
Every project, and every group of people, needs a “chief”, a leader, a head, someone who decides the way to go.

In case of Anytype, the decision, after thinking a lot about the best way, has lead to AnyTwo.
The “authorities” didn’t make this decision to peeve us users; they did chose this way for good reasons.
Til this point, the story is a factum.

But the thing is: they want to make the whole thing as pleasant for us as possible!
That means, the “bosses” listen to us and our needs!
They have a vision, but they want to design a bespoke suit for us, that fits us a neatly as possible.
That means, you can get your wishes fulfilled to a high degree if you bring yourself in.

The whole system, the whole way, is as much democratic as it can be.
(Btw. a true democracy doesn’t exist and did never exist anywhere in the world, no matter what political leaders ever lied to you!).
– Where else do you get this level of influence then here?

I came from Microsoft’s OneNote. This product never fulfilled my needs well enough, but I used it for 10 years, because I didn’t have had an acceptable alternative. Over time, my frustration about the thing accumulated till the point where I desperately looked for a substitute that better fits to my needs.
It was clear that Microsoft would never hear me what I want.
And it was also clear that barely no other company would hear me, never fulfill my personal wishes.

Finally I found my way to Anytype.
And although this product was a horrible and barely usable bunch of bugs three years ago, something convinced me.
I wrote some bug reports and some request, and I saw that they really reacted, that they really did something.
Not always to 100% what I wanted, but it was obvious that my voice has a lot weight on what they do.
– This fact was the thing that convinced me to stay, despite of all these bugs and flaws.

Over the three years, a lot of my ideas found their way into the product. – Or, at least, on the roadmap.
The communication was not always commendable, but this has changed completely since Kaye has entered the stage.
In the last months, it has been relative still, there came only minor updates and Razor was suddenly absent. Rumours and concerns began to circulate.
But then, finally, the Town Hall – they came up with what they have cooked behind the veils; they was finally ready to show us what mind blowing things are to expect in the near future!

And the best: we all are invited to participate, to put our fingerprints and footmarks on the design!
They don’t present us a finished meal with the words “engulf it or die”. Nope, we are invited to assist the cooks in the kitchen while they cook for us our most beloved meal!

Still, someone has to make the final decision about each detail. That’s unavoidable.
But where else can you get more influence on the final result then here?

No software on earth is 100% fitting to the own needs and wishes.
Another product may have already this or that additional feature that looks tasty. But I wouldn’t switch for that if I must give up my personal influence. Because I know, on the long run, frustrations would accumulate again, as it was for me with OneNote.
I prefer to have some influence (although it can never be a 100% influence).

The more you involve yourself here, the more influence you have.
Because of that, Anytype/AnyTwo feels like as if it is OUR product.
We all together shape it. And some of us come up with even better ideas than our own imagination would ever allow.

– I don’t get it why some users still complain after seeing the Town Hall?
Anytype was already a good product, though with flaws and unfortunately with some de facto not fixable flaws.
But the Town Hall should have everyone convinced that this ist the way!
This is the way to finally overcome all the existing bottle necks and flaws.
This is the way that we finally get our needs fulfilled that in past wasn’t fulfillable.

We all have seen Razor struggling day and night to untangle the old and rotten rope, but it was seemingly impossible and I feared about his health since long.
Now the cut: NEW code and also other people behind the design.
I can imagine that it was a painful decision, but I see it as the right decision. It was necessary to be this radical.

AnyTwo is the future! Let’s shape it all together!
Let’s no longer complain about the past; let’s look ahead!
We are on the edge to eye-witness the birth of the best PKM system that has ever existed!
And we all are even part of this process!

15

Well… nothing is guaranteed in life… everything is unpredictable :slight_smile:

But:

  • If one is optimistic about it, then embrace and migrate to AnyTwo as soon as possible
  • If one is pessimistic about it, then hold out (keep on Anytype or another app) and see what happens

Either way, I am sure that it was not an easy decision to make, and that all efforts are being done so that there is a bright future and complete success as the outcome.

All we (the users) can do is try to help, support and hope for the best!

16

A few personal thoughts on this discussion, especially regarding some points brought up by @Code-Jack:

1. On asking users “what better idea do you have?”:
I think we should keep the roles clear. The team’s job is to solve product problems, while the user’s role is to use the product and pay for it (with money, time, or attention). We shouldn’t shift the burden of figuring out product solutions onto the users. Many people are on this forum simply to stay updated or share a quick thought—they aren’t here to be part of the dev team or co-create the software. At the end of the day, they are just regular users who want things to work, so their concerns about stability and data are completely reasonable and should be taken seriously.

2. On comparing this to a “democracy”:
To be honest, I don’t think that analogy really fits. A democracy only applies to people who actually own the place. We, as users, don’t own Anytype—we only have the right to use it, while the company owns 100% of the product. So there is no real democracy here, and we aren’t the owners. The team listens to the community selectively because it’s good for their business first. It benefits us too, of course, but that’s secondary. In fact, sometimes the right move for a team is not to listen to the crowd. The crowd isn’t always right, especially when most people don’t share the real risks, stress, and internal information that the founders carry every day. It’s very easy to throw around casual opinions when you don’t have anything on the line.

3. On the decision to rebuild:
I personally believe that rebuilding from scratch is an optimal, right, and truly brave decision—if we look at it strictly from the perspective of a startup that needs to optimize limited resources and make tough choices. But looking at it from the user’s side, it’s still undeniably a hit to the experience. That said, I also have plenty of reasons to believe that data migration will go smoothly, or at least won’t be too painful or frustrating for most of us.

17

Btw.: My honored fellow @VisualNotes is a Bug Detective (same as my humble self).
That means, that he already brings himself in A LOT (although we Bug Detectives are still normal users, not payed team members).
Therefore, my question (that was half addressed to him, but half addressed to the whole audience), if he really has a better idea, was legitimate.

There is no doubt that he cares a lot about Anytype.
Other users may simply want to use Anytype, but someone as highly honored as VisualNotes is well known for bringing in good ideas.
The same counts of course for all the other Bug Detectives, as well as for some other users here.

It was a little still during the last months, so I tried to revive our good old team spirit.
What Anytype is today, is (beside of the team’s work, of course) down to all of us who have brought them self in here so relentless all the time.
I’m very thankful for that, because I use Anytype a lot and have my benefits from their good ideas that the devs then have implemented!

– I could formulate that all much better in my own language then I ever could do it in English, even with the help of deepl.com that I sometimes use. The finer vibes go always lost during the translation, unfortunately.

18

I agree 100%. Your story mirrors my own experience (onenote… sigh!!) and I’m pinning all my hopes and excitement on Anytype: finally having the tool I’ve always wanted. Plus, the community is amazing! P.S. Please excuse my terrible English :wink: