Nao sei
This was the first thing I read today and I have been thinking about this announcement the whole day.
Damien’s long-term commitment to the Anki ecosystem has always been outstanding. Despite being a digital platform, it felt more like some people commit theirselves in their analogue lives: Leading a choir for decades, taking care of a garden or being the trainer who is always present in a sports club.
This commitment always struck a chord with me and gave me confidence to commit myself to use Anki daily as well. I am a approaching a seven-year long streak. Few software lasts this long these days without profund changes to its business model.
While this is another welcome opportunity to thank Damien for what he has given to us, I am also afraid of what the future holds.
A larger team also means higher running costs. In their desire to gain more market share to make ends meet and to ride the hype train, I have seen software products going down the drain.
AnkiHub already features four different subscriptions for the platform. You can become a VIP, there is a mastery course, you can buy t-shirts, take a premed course or book tutoring. I remember promotional texts for “Simple, Clear and Transparent Personal Loans For Doctors, Physicians & Dentist” on their website. I often had the feeling that there is a culture of “growth” that not necessarily aligns with a software tool that I consider mature and more or less feature-complete.
I hope they manage to keep Anki and AnkiHub/AnKing apart and know the meaning of “enough” (ai-features, revenue, team-size, business partners, …).
To @dae all the best, for your new role and beyond.
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Copying from my reddit comment:
I’m personally OK with them [AnkiHub] charging money for syncing or similar services that require servers and maintenance costs.
But for features that are already free and offline, e.g. FSRS, it would be unacceptable to suddenly lock them behind a paywall.
As for development and updates: it’s fair for them to charge money for their work, but if someone is willing to add a feature or fix a bug for free, they should allow them, in the spirit of open source.
Edit: To clarify the last paragraph, I mean that I’m fine with them adding paid features, but if someone wants to add said features to the core app free for all, they should allow it to happen.
So the current features of Anki/AnkiDroid should remain FOSS and offline-first as they currently are.
Also, I hope to never see ads, AI[1], or similar crap being added to the base apps.
However this ends, I’m grateful to Damien for making Anki and to those who contributed to it over the years.
I’vs read the bad comments about AnkiHub, so I hope you won’t disappoint us!
for generating cards and such, as opposed to better scheduling or a smarter search. ↩︎
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This is very sad news. I don’t trust the group that cannibalized free content only to lock it behind a paywall. And I certainly don’t trust them not to do it again.
This is a good point and not yet addressed. What happens to current server data? Im not talking about pricing yet. Do they inherit rights to this massive pool of decks?
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Some of us have always wanted encryption in AnkiWeb sync, but it wasn’t a huge priority for most of us because dae was in control.
But it’s different now as I don’t trust AnkiHub with my data at all. Even if they don’t do anything now, we don’t know who will control this company in the future and what decisions they’ll make.
We as users probably should demand that encryption be added to sync services.
I share my decks with the community so syncing with AnkiWeb is still the easiest route to take.
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I watched the video
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I dont doubt for a second that ankihub dont have ill intentions towards anki. I trust they are acting in good faith. But, what i think is best for the project might not be the same you think is the best for the project
This same debate happens eventually in every open source community. Theres a reason succesful projects have a fundation even if it seems more work. A company taking over a project and the project not going to shit eventually, even with everybodies involved good intentions, are slim
A benevolent dictator for life is how good projects start and then eventually transition to fundation
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AnkiHub is a subscription service, and I fundamentally do not trust subscription services.
This is not a question of patience or goodwill—there was no trust to begin with.
To me, AnkiHub owning Anki is indistinguishable from Netflix owning it.
Heck, I don’t even trust AnkiHub even if @dae ran it himself. A flawed system doesn’t become trustworthy just because a (or bunch of) good person sits on top of it.
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For the time being, given the points raised not only here but on the reddit discussions, I will be unsharing my content and providing it to community via other means. Hopefully this can be cleared up by them soon.
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Will you promise to not remove the shared decks section to sell premade content like Memrise did?
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It is important that a figure like dae have some sort of veto power while he is on the sidelines.
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man this is sad 
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If Anki becomes a subscription service, it will be its death knell. And we will all share the blame. I think many will make it their personal mission to undermine such a venture, whether via creating competing free apps and syncserver options or through word of mouth.
Would it even make sense to charge for decks when they could easily be pirated? If AnkiHub goes so far as to try to make export difficult, I feel this would only create more potential piracy.
I hope AnkiHub knows that and doesn’t see this as a business venture.
Overall, I will now be wary even mentioning the name Anki to others. The lesson here is that the spacing effect is key, not any program. And that the best algorithms for it are community-made (see FSRS vs. SM).
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Thank you for making this it really clarifies a lot of my concerns.
Oh my goodness I’d rather keep Anki frozen than delegate the ownership to anybody.
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“
No enshittification.”: Wouldn’t putting a “Third Party Services” tab on Anki be the beginning of an enshittification?
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Thank you @dae for all these years. I have been using Anki for about 15 years now, and it has enabled me to learn and remember so many useful things. 
@AnkiHub @AnKingMed The only question you really need to answer is:
Will you guarantee that using Anki like it is now (with desktop, sync, one-time fee for app) will remain free forever?
If not, I (and, I am sure, the community) would like to know as early as possible so we can transfer to our own solutions. Writing custom software is pretty cheap and easy these days, and someone will build a free alternative (app and community) if you mess this up. Good luck!
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All I can ask is for @AnkiHub to please be respectful to your preexisting base. Consider changes carefully, because the audience you are inheriting is used to software that is feature complete and expects the UI and workflow to work a certain rigid way and meet a certain level of compactness. Anki is currently the only major software on my computer that I can be confident respects my screen real estate and time and won’t change my workflow or break extensions between updates. This comes with design sensibilities that might seem archaic to modern UX people and you might feel tempted to change it. Please be careful with it.
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If this were true, thousands of similar programs would have been created long ago. 
Artificial intelligence can generate code, but checking and testing it takes a ton of time, not to mention technical resources, which cost money. Anki operated on the assumption that if we offer free software, you’ll spend your time (and time is your money) sharing your work with the community. But such people are few, probably 1% of the total, and their number is decreasing every year.
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You are asking the community to have faith in AnkiHub’s true intentions.
If you actually want support from the community, you shouldn’t be asking to be trusted. What you should be doing is commiting, so people don’t have to trust you.
Most people contributed to the project not because they knew and trusted Damien. They did because there’s a license, which guarantees that their work will be kept free.
The corporate message sent by Anking doesn’t commit to anything. It’s a bunch of promises that can be voided at any time.
If you really want Anki’s values to endure, the power should be handed over to a foundation with strict rules and legal binding, not a company.
Foundations seek principles. Companies seek profit. That’s their nature.
If AnkiHub’s best interest and main priority is Anki’s principles, they shouldn’t be opposed to this. If they are, it’s because their priority really is profit.
If you think that a company taking over is the only sustainable approach, just say it. Align what people can expect with the reality.
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