Ask HN: If Evernote goes out of business, what happens to all our notes? - alexgpark
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hNewsLover99
If they go out due to bankruptcy/liquidation, the b'y trustee can "avoid"
what(ever few) privacy and IP ownership protections that my exist in the
Evernote EULA and sell all of your data AND identity to data brokers... after
all what's more important than making the creditors whole?!?

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halleym
I've been thinking about this lately. It would be difficult, but I think
legislation against this scenario should be an immediate concern.

It's like Snapchat; the whole premise of security disappears when the user
realizes they can take a screenshot.

A company can go bankrupt and sell off all user data, in raw form or
otherwise, regardless of the agreement under which they collected it.

Huh.

~~~
finance-geek
Is that really the case? Would liquidation take priority over contracts (EULAs
in this case) -- I wonder what happened when St. Vincent's Hospital went
bankrupt...were all the medical records sold off to the highest bidder(I dont
remember hearing about that?)

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ptype
Is anyone aware of any good open alternatives to Evernote? I've been reluctant
to try Evernote for that particular reason (and lock-in factors). Ideally
something like: 1) open source format; 2) you host the files e.g. on Dropbox;
3) markdown; 4) searchable (and entries can be tagged). Happy to pay for the
app but the files need to be self-hosted in an open format.

~~~
waz0wski
This was discussed on HN previously, with no GREAT alternatives, but a few
workable alternatives[1]

I'm actively looking for a replacement. I have tried Paperwork[2], Laverna[3],
and DevonThink[4]

If you're on OSX, and open to a fair amount of upfront work, DevonThink is the
best alternative I've used, and can sync with webDAV against Owncloud-or-
other-DAV-server for multi-client-access.

That said, I've not yet found anything that approaches the overall feature set
of Evernote across OSX+iOS, and continue to use it daily. I wish they would
just let us host our notebooks on our own datastores.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9206002](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9206002)

[2] [http://paperwork.rocks](http://paperwork.rocks)

[3] [https://laverna.cc](https://laverna.cc)

[4]
[http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/devonthink/overvie...](http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/devonthink/overview.html)

~~~
akulbe
+1 for DEVONthink. Your description is fitting, too.

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weee_username
Whatever evernote decides.

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neuromancer2600
I guess before that happens, we should have all migrated to another tool -
Microsoft OneNote being the closest competitor, having this tool at hand may
make sense: [http://www.howtogeek.com/227719/how-to-convert-from-
evernote...](http://www.howtogeek.com/227719/how-to-convert-from-evernote-to-
onenote/)

~~~
tw04
FFS Microsoft, let me pin my notebooks on the lefthand side of onenote for
mac. The navigation when you have lots and lots of sections is horrendous.
ESPECIALLY when you can't sort by name from the mac client. Regardless,
scrolling left to right isn't natural with a keyboard and mouse when you've
got literally hundreds of sections like I do (one per client).

~~~
meesterdude
as a side note, I'd be curious to see what you store and how you organize it
and use it for.

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chrisbennet
I found this while I was looking for info on Evernote just now; they were Inc
magazine's company of the year in 2011.

[http://www.inc.com/magazine/201112/evernote-2011-company-
of-...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/201112/evernote-2011-company-of-the-
year.html)

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PixeledOne
Similar to NvAtl and Devonthink for the Mac is Eaglefiler
[http://c-command.com/eaglefiler/](http://c-command.com/eaglefiler/)

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geyang
I'm working on a real-time collaborative note taking app with math
typesetting. (www.escherpad.com)

Do you think porting data over is something that people might be interested in
paying for on a subscription plan?

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asadlionpk
not to sound rude but I don't think people who are concerned about their notes
would move their precious notes to another not-yet-proven startup.

~~~
geyang
I agree. So I will just focus on building the core app then!

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akulbe
I _loved_ Evernote. With Libin leaving, it seemed like writing on the wall. I
migrated everything to Google Drive while I plan my migration to DEVONthink.

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abrookewood
if you're seriously concerned about this, then the answer is to backup your
notes periodically. There are a number of ways to do this - the one I use
involves installing Evernote locally and then periodically exporting the
database into Dropbox. Of course, this doesn't guarantee that your notes won't
fall into the wrong hands. To avoid that you'd need to either encrypt your
notes or run something yourself.

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finance-geek
There is probably a diff history, so if the notes get out, encrypting only
protects you on new notes going forward.

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gamesbrainiac
What usually happens in cases like these is that you get to download all of
your notes in some format. This is what happened when google wave was taken
down.

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lgas
Google shuttering a product is a bit of a different thing than a company going
out of business. It's a different pool of people in a different position
dealing with different issues. I'd like to think they would do the same
(right) thing, but I think that's a risky bet.

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msh
The Evernote desktop app got some quite nice export functions.

It can, among others make a quite nice linked HTML tree.

I guess, google keep and onenote is the closest competitors.

