Techlore Talks Diving Into The World of Open Source Notes with Abdullah Atta from Notesnook
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Jan 4, 2023 Abdullah Atta, CEO and co-founder of Notesnook, dives into creating a privacy-focused, open-source note-taking app. He shares his motivations for prioritizing end-to-end encryption and the challenges of maintaining a user-friendly experience while ensuring security. Abdullah highlights the target audience, emphasizing mainstream users, and discusses the importance of feature parity for those migrating from existing apps. He also touches on the technical hurdles of collaboration and the enthusiastic community response after going open source.
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Privacy Without Compromise
- Abdullah Atta saw a gap in note-taking where privacy didn't have to mean sacrificing features or usability.
- He designed Notesnook to offer familiar workflows while keeping data private by default.
A Family-Built Product
- Notesnook is built and run by three brothers: Abdullah, Amar, and Ali, who coded it from day one.
- They decide every feature by asking if it will affect user privacy before adding it.
E2EE Raises Migration And Reliability Costs
- End-to-end encryption forces heavy client-side responsibility and makes migrations and bug fixes harder.
- Design mistakes propagate because you must update each user's device, hurting reliability.