Anki's Growing Up

Anki Announcements
21

A few questions,

is this team more open to implement references to another cards in the form of {id:field} to being able to refer to another card text and so avoid duplicate info?

How about a field to be able to reference related cards (for autoburiying)

How about keeping plugins under version control?

Are new plugin system targeted be compatible with the old one or are we going to have to rewrite them

And the last one, what happen to the current anki infrastructure? does @dae keep the keys of the realm or do you inherit that too

Scary but not so much. Its hard to believe that somebody better than @dae is taking over, no offense. I dont mind slow steady pace. What we have is good. At least, the code that is out is already out and we can always keep ourselves into older versions when new team decides to move everything around :slight_smile:

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22

@dae I can only support the previous statements of gratitude and appreciation for all you have done for this project! To follow in your footsteps will be a daunting task.

@AnkiHub @dae some questions that come to mind for me:

  • Why transition the stewardship to AnkiHub as a company and not to an independent foundation with AnkiHub as a corporate sponsor?
    I can’t remember a “privatisation” (in quotes, since it’s obviously not the best word here) of a FOSS project that ended well; the successful transitions that come to my mind were of the latter kind.

A more robust add-on ecosystem. We’d love to build tools that empower non-technical users to customize Anki for their needs, and we’re exploring add-ons that work everywhere, including mobile.

  • I would love some technical clarifications on the plans of how you intend to achieve this. For example, Obsidian only has plugins on mobile because it is an Electron app, i.e., in essence a nicely wrapped web browser with only one website.
    One very big advantage of Anki’s add-on ecosystem is that it allows effectively arbitrary code execution on the user’s machine, which one the one hand is a huge security risk, but on the other hand also allows for an incredible amount of flexibility.
    I worry that a slogan like “add-ons everywhere“ results in a two-tier ecosystem, half as-is, half proprietary, where only a select few add-ons are available on mobile.

Will Anki remain open source?

Absolutely. Anki’s core code will remain open source […].

  • What is “Anki’s core code“ in this context? The full ankitects/anki GitHub repo? Any other code (iOS / AnkiWeb) will remain closed source?

Are there any changes planned to Anki’s pricing?

No. We are committed to fair pricing that supports users rather than exploiting them. Both Anki and AnkiHub are already profitable. Any future decisions will be made with community benefit, user value, and long-term project health in mind.

  • The cynic in me says that “community benefit, user value, and long-term project health“ could be used to justify a lot of things.
    Can you commit to AnkiWeb and the sync services remaining free as they currently are?

Will there be a public governance model, advisory board, or other accountability structure?

We’re exploring what makes sense here, and we don’t want to rush it.

  • I am a bit saddened by the fact that this transition comes so out of nowhere. With changes in governance still being in the “exploration“ phase, especially with such a huge rearrangement, I feel like this whole project is a bit rushed without the care and sensitivity required for such a delicate undertaking.
    The fact that the question about the timeline is effectively answered with “we have no timeline” does not help either.
    Can you give a specific timeline of when we can expect the accountability structure to be in place?

What new resources will Anki gain through this transition?

The biggest change is bandwidth by enabling more people to work on Anki without everything being bottlenecked through a single person. This will take time, but will eventually translate into more engineering, design, and support capacity.

  • What design issues do you currently see as most critical?
    In my daily usage, I definitely encounter difficulties where I have to help friends and classmates with the stuff they want to do. However, in some ways, I also appreciate the complexity of Anki. It is “professional” level software for people who want to take digital flashcards seriously. Usability is not necessarily the absolute priority, but capabilities are (like for example the ffmpeg cli interface).
    I would love some more concrete examples of where you want to spend resources on in this regard.

  • Finally, integrating AnkiHub into Anki itself is not a new idea. With AnkiHub now taking Anki development under its wings, what assurances can you give that similar integrations of successful add-ons (e.g. ImageOcclusion) will also be possible for other community-driven projects? If not integrating add-ons, can you assure that the “clear API“ you want to develop remains as powerful as the (admittedly hard to wield) current API?

I hope that the future of Anki will be bright and wish this community the best of luck!

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23

@dae Thank you so much for your contributions to Anki and for all the work you’ve put into this project.

It’s fair to say that you’ve touched and inspired a huge number of people. What you created didn’t just help individuals—it sparked a movement and sent real waves through the community.

Your work enabled me to create Ankimon and supported my studies in ways I never expected. Through it, I connected with amazing individuals around the world I otherwise would never have met, and I became part of an amazing, welcoming community. I’ve met some truly great people along the way.

Thank you for your dedication and for the immense impact you’ve had—not just on this community, but honestly, on the world - and me.

@ankihub Interesting times are ahead, and I’d love to offer my help or contribute further. Ankimon has grown into an active, engaged community with many users and valuable insights gained over time in addon development and project structure. We’d be happy to help improve Anki, strengthen its addon ecosystem, and ensure Ankimon remains available and beneficial for all users.

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24

@dae want to take the chance to thank you, about 13 years after I first discovered Anki. Hope life treats you well. You’ve provided a doubly-free but priceless service for almost 2 decades. I am confident that your work will be remembered for much, much longer. All things must come to an end I guess (or a new beginning? we’ll see). Scary times ahead. But having faith in your choice.

@AnkiHub appreciate the transparency being here to answer questions. Hopefully you understand why some might be skeptic. Not much to ask beyond what’s already been mentioned. Can’t mention any more users as this is a new account.

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25

i have questions

1. The current deck size limit that can be uploaded to ankiweb is 250mb. Will it stay that way?

  1. can you guys raise the deck title char limit? i made a thread: Feature request: on decks shared on ankiweb, raise title char limit from 60 to ~120 – the 60 char limit is too low, and it leads to otherwise-awesome decks having a real case of title-gore as uploaders struggle to fit everything in 60chars, for example, this deck: Japanese Kana (Hiragana,Katakana,Mnemonics,2x Audio,Stroke) - AnkiWeb
  2. what is your opinion on making a LTS version of Anki? I think it would be awesome, but Damien said he doesn’t like the idea
26

Thank you @dae for all that you have done. May you have fun filled future the way you want it to be. Amen.

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27

Thank you VERY much @dae for all you’ve done over the years, and for being able to maintain a cool attitude. I wish you the best.

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28

I am skeptical of @ankihub I think he and his team will just paywall and shit-tify Anki with vibe coded slop. Good thing that Anki is open source!

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29

Thank you @dae for all your work and support to the Anki project. There are no words to express my gratitude and the impact you have had on hundreds of thousands of students and individuals. It’s too early to know how @Ankihub will handle the project, but the FAQ is appreciated. Personally, I believe that as long as it remains completely FOSS as it is and no paywalls are used, I hope this change will be for the better.

I’d like to see @L.M.Sherlock , @Expertium and @A_Blokee opinions on this.

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30

Idk, my stance is “I’m not going to assume bad intentions (enshittification) until they give me a reason to”.

EDIT: to @AnkiHub. I strongly advise against adding paid, subscription-based features to Anki, at any point in time, for any reason (that includes AnkiMobile, keep the current one-time payment system). Not because you will make me mad, but because you will make a whole lot of users mad, and the number of users quitting Anki will be record-high. That would be a “I want to watch the world burn” kind of move. I’d like to see you guys commit to NOT doing that. Like, seriously commit. Unless you do want to watch the world burn, but I hope not. I guess with AnkiMobile it’s more blurry, but regarding desktop Anki and AnkiDroid - yeah, I would not add any subscription-based features ever if I wanted to avoid an exodus of users.
Speaking of money, I recommend setting up a way to donate to desktop Anki. It has been requested many times over the years.

EDIT 2: the reception of this change both here and on r/Anki has been mixed, so keep in mind that a lot of users are on the edge about whether to entrust Anki to you guys.

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31

Thank you for everything, @dae.

Like a few others, I am a little bit unsettled by this statement:

I would like to see a stronger commitment here. You could argue for the “core code” being almost anything you want it to be. From previous conversations with AnkiHub people I have a feeling they don’t really get open source.

I would also like to see a commitment to still being platform neutral. When AnkiHub was added as a third-party service directly in Anki @dae committed to allowing other services equal opportunity to be integrated. There hasn’t been another service that has aspired to this as far as I know, but I’d like to know that they would still be welcome if they pop up in the future.

I agree with @phyn that some sort of foundation would make more sense than giving it away to a single corporate entity (which is far from universally loved by the community).

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33

Thank you Dae for everything you’ve done for Anki.

Regarding the change to Anking, of course there are concerns and some fears, because I tend to think that you don’t mess with a winning team. What if they change their minds in the future and start charging? That would be very sad.

The main points are whether Anki will remain open source, especially on the computer, and whether it will remain free. From what Anking has said, it will be free, so I’ll trust that.

I say this because more than 90% of the add-on developer community are mostly volunteers who don’t charge anything to create them, leaving the code available on GitHub, reflecting Anki’s open-source spirit, giving access to knowledge to any level of person and not just doctors.

My concerns regarding design are whether Anki will become colorful and if this will only be to please beginner users? This would be a serious problem, because many people like Anki simple as it is, without distracting colors and more buttons, so it might appeal to an audience that is just starting to use it, but at the same time it would displease an existing audience that doesn’t like flashy designs.

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34

Thank you Dae. I’ve used Anki for 10+ years and appreciate the love and care you’ve given.

Curious if AnkiHub’s post is created by AI?

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35

Pangram says no. LLM detectors often suck, but as far as I’m aware Pangram is good.
(though people aware of Pangram could deliberately tweak wording and run it through Pangram multiple times until the estimated % of AI content is sufficiently low, but I’d be surprised if AnkiHub went that far)

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36

@AnkiHub couldn’t even take the time to write the post (Scanned with GPTZero).

image
image2114×1259 486 KB

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37

Thank you for everything you have done Dae.

Your work has empowered an amount of people I cannot really grasp to achieve their goals, it shapes a generation of students. I am grateful for Anki everyday, maybe less than today on some days, but it is a part of my life that I would miss, dearly.

I wish you all the best and good luck.

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38

Yeah… I’m extremely skeptical.

The moment you have a profitable company sitting on top of the most popular spaced-repetition program in the world + the biggest & most valuable shared deck ecosystem, the commercial incentives become enormous.

History shows pretty much every single time this exact situation has happened the product eventually gets monetized much more aggressively.

So my current plan is the following:

1. Assume this transition will eventually lead to much heavier commercialization of Anki (paywalls on more features, subscription creep, worse add-on story for non-AnkiHub users, etc)

2. Start working on / support a hard fork that keeps the project genuinely open, community-driven, no single company sitting on top of it

3. Make it as painful as possible for AnkiHub to ever turn Anki into another Notion / Obsidian / Readwise / Superhuman-style aggressive subscription product

If you feel the same way and especially if you’re a developer / add-on author / power user who doesn’t want to watch the project slowly get enshittified, please start talking about forking now while the code is still genuinely free & the transition is still fresh.

The best time to prepare an independent fork was 4 months ago.

The second best time is right now.

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39

Long time no see, Dae. I’m grateful for your 19 years of persistence in Anki and keeping it open source. Without Anki, my own story–from struggling student to developing FSRS–would not have happened. Anki is more than a software, more than a tool for me. With the development of FSRS, I have made friends with many contributors from Anki community.

You mentioned being in a state of “unsustainably long hours and constant stress,” losing the ability to do “Deep Work.” As a maintainer of open-source projects myself, I deeply understand this isolation and burnout. Dae, enjoy your retirement (or at least, stepping back).

Regards to AnkiHub, I cooperated with AnKing in 2023 for the video of introducing FSRS. I’m not familiar with the med school community and their contribution to it, but I think he is kind and patient. And more importantly, he is a power user of Anki. I will trust him. But I also have some concerns:

  1. To my best knowledge, AnkiHub is currently a subscription service, and there has been partial integration of AnkiHub in Anki. It’s tempting for AnkiHub to extend its scope of integration and add CM into Anki.
  2. AnkiHub is a centralized collaboration platform, which fundamentally differs from the local-first philosophy of Anki Desktop. I hope Anki can still advocate local-first.

For FSRS, it was integrated natively into Anki starting with version 23.10, as a result of community collaboration.

As the author of FSRS, I will ensure that the FSRS algorithm itself remains independent, open-source, and not bound to any single platform.

As a community member, I hold AnkiHub to their promises—that the core of Anki remains free, open, and user-owned.

As a user, Anki’s UI is indeed due for an overhaul. If this change makes Anki more accessible to beginners, allowing more people to reap the benefits of spaced repetition, that is a win.

AnkiHub, please do not betray the trust built over 19 years.

Let’s see what we can build together.

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40

This post doesn’t rule out charging in the future - ‘fair pricing’ and ‘if anything needs to change’ suggests future fees are on the table. Anki has been free for almost 20 years. Can Ankihub be more transparent about what scenarios might cause a fee?

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41

I also feel strongly about this. It was not explicitly stated that the Anki program would remain free for the years to come, and I find that disconcerting. Please, Ankihub, if you hear anything from us users, as this ownership transition happens please keep a core principle to keep Anki free. This is what drew many users to the program, and it is often the downfall of many incredible programs.

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