But then they can't try to force people into their sweet, sweet subscription services.

Obsidian has a paid subscription sync service and is free but not open source software.

Joplin has a paid subscription sync service and is free and open source software.

It's a different business model, but it's possible.

I made a service to sync remarkable to obsidian. It's not free, but it _is_ open-source so you can self-host for free.

https://scrybble.ink

Yeah. But then people are not going to buy their hardware. I have a reMarkable from 6 years ago that I'm using to run Toltec and koreader, but I'm not going to buy any new hardware from them.

Was the subscription income worth it?

Same. I'm finally looking to get away from Kindle, and ReMarkable is off the list.

Was comparing the remarkable with the kindle scribe and the boox note 5c - and settled on the 5c - though the battery life trade-off is significant (I end up charging once every 3-4 days, with 2-3 hours of daily use - writing and reading) - and I am really happy with the device. Fantastic hand-writing feel, very good on-device hand-writing recognition, and decent to very good integration with google drive, notes export, etc. May be worth considering if you are looking for an colour e-ink device that you can write on (notes, thoughts, journalling), as well as run android play store applications, including the kindle app.

I tried Boox (Note Air 3 Colour) but it wouldn't run the one 'android' app I needed - O'Reilly bookshelf. Returned it and got an iPad instead. Seemed ok but only half supports apps. I didn't have it long enough to suffer pen accuracy or general performance, but the colours were muddy.

You probably have lifetime subscription btw.

I have two devices with lifetime (RM 1 + 2)

RM was very generous giving it to all devices bought before the service came out.

It's only $5/mo iirc w/ no hard limits, not a bad deal to sync your docs, pdfs, and books tbh.

> very generous

Are you affiliated with the company?

Nope, not in any way.

I just like the product and thought the free lifetime was nice.

Would be nice to work there for a year or so to implement a wishlist of features for the OS though.