It was a fascinating symbiotic between nerdy med students from all over the world and an obscure open source flashcard app that originally targeted language learners. I've been part of that community for many years and would have never foreseen this outcome but in hindsight it seems the best path forward for anki.
True. It should however be noted that the most active maintainer of AnkiDroid will be joining the new entity:
> We’re currently talking to David Allison, a long-time core contributor to AnkiDroid, about working together on exactly these questions. His experience with AnkiDroid’s collaborative development is invaluable, and we’re grateful he’s willing to help us get this right. We’re incredibly excited to have him join us full-time to help propel Anki into the future.
What’s so bad about the paid iOS client? I remember it being expensive when I got it but it works fine for my use case (mix of getting me through part of med school, all of law school, and the just general shit I’d like to remember and learn). There’s definitely never been anything jarring about using it vs the Mac or windows clients but I’m happy for somebody to point out the problems I’ve been missing!
From the posts, it sounds like the original maintainer was approaching the point where they'd just abandon it, so this overall seems like a better outcome than either abandonment or sale to a PE firm.
I'm an Anki user, on and off since 10 years or so, but was still confused. If I understood correctly, the entities here are:
- Anki, as set up by dae aka Damien, is like the brand name and desktop implementation with the spaced repetition algorithm
- AnkiWeb is what I thought this hub thing was. It's where you download decks
- AnkiHub is a third party (started by "AnKing", now 35 employees) who sells decks as a monthly subscription and has their content on the deep web (you need to create an account and agree to terms to even see a listing of what's there besides a few featured parts). This is who is getting ownership of the former two. Because they write that Anki will remain open source at its "core", I presume that means that things will, at best, stay stable rather than anything (like AnkiWeb the deck sharing platform) becoming open
- AnkiDroid is a separate open source project (an Android app). The corporation is hiring the main developer, but it's not yet clear to me whether they're just going to get paid to work more on AnkiDroid or if they're also getting other tasks
> - AnkiDroid is a separate open source project (an Android app). The corporation is hiring the main developer, but it's not yet clear to me whether they're just going to get paid to work more on AnkiDroid or if they're also getting other tasks
----
To copy from my message on Discord:
> I’m moving to a full-time position working on Anki [incl. AnkiWeb & AnkiMobile]. I’m really excited about this, but there’s a mountain of pending, somewhat undefined work which will need to be done, and it’ll need my full-time attention for a while.
> I’ll still be contributing to AnkiDroid, but I won’t be able to commit as much time as I am doing currently (at least for the first few months while things stabilize). I’ll be here on evenings/weekends, and will be contributing in other ways (hopefully: unified Note Editor, JS addons etc… ), but I expect to slow down with code contributions to ensure I’m staying on on top of PR reviews & general force multiplier work. I’m definitely Org Admin’ing for GSoC over the summer [assuming Google gives us the greenlight], it’s historically been a VERY light role.
> In all honesty: I’m expecting things to be business as usual, I have more than enough capacity to keep up with the notification queue. Even if I completely dropped off the planet, we’re a great team and the improvements would keep on flowing. AnkiDroid’s bus factor has been >>> 1 for a LONG time now.
(Same person as above but felt that this part had a separate purpose so I've moved it into its own comment)
The ecosystem is currently such that it seems hard to enshittify it. They say they have no intention of doing that and I believe it, but their vision of a healthy and good product might involve a fair price (for rich countries at least) whereas it was always free so far
Time will tell; it sounds like there's currently no plans either way, but it's also simply open enough that users can always just install the open source software and share decks with each other by whatever file transfer/sharing means. Everything that's already there won't simply go away. I'm going to keep using AnkiDroid and building the language deck I am working on
This may be true, but as someone who picked up Anki as a desktop app back around 2009 it feels a little crazy.
I also can’t imagine making cards on a phone, given how much switching between apps/windows is involved and how poor mobile platforms are at multitasking. It’s difficult to envision it being anything but maddening.
Worth noting you don't need to use it. Anki comes with a syncserver implementation for a while now, and there are docker images too. It's worth it for the transfer speeds alone IMO.
Anki is under AGPL too, which has an anti-DRM clause, so many type of enshittification of anki or their addons (e.g. to prevent sharing of their decks) would be unenforceable too.
As such I see no obvious things that would be susceptible to enshittification here.
At a fundamental level the algorithms predict the probability of a learner to correctly recollect a factoid at a given point in time given a history of sampling that recollection / presentation.
It would be interesting to have machine learning predict these probability evolutions instead. Simply recollecting tangential knowledge improves the recollection of a non-sampled factoid, which is hard to model in a strict sense, or perhaps easy for (undiscovered) dedicated analytic models. Having good performing but relatively opaque (high parameter counts) ML models could be helpful because we can treat the high parameter count ML model as surrogate humans for memory recollection experiments and try to find low parameter count models (analytic or ML) that adequately distill the learning patterns, without having to do costly human-hour experiments on actual human brains.
In a nice and controlled manner, so seemingly no reason to panic just yet:
> I ended up suggesting to them that we look into gradually transitioning business operations and open source stewardship over, with provisions in place to ensure that Anki remains open source and true to the principles I’ve run it by all these years.
> This is a step back for me rather than a goodbye - I will still be involved with the project, albeit at a more sustainable level.
From AnkiHub:
> No enshittification. We’ve seen what happens when VC-backed companies acquire beloved tools. That’s not what this is. There are no investors involved, and we’re not here to extract value from something the community built together. Building in the right safeguards and processes to handle pressure without stifling necessary improvements is something we’re actively considering.
Relieved at that part where they say there are no investors involved, makes the whole thing a whole lot less risky. Good for everyone involved, and here's to many more years with Anki :)
Might as well give a recommendation then: I've been using hashcards [0] for a few weeks now and have enjoyed its simplicity and the fact that it all stays forever in raw markdown files and versioned git. A simple justfile has also been helpful.
Well every company claims no enshittification when they get acquired, in the end that's rarely the case. It's like Private Equity buying a company out and say "Nothing will change"
AnkiHub people seem kind of slimy in my experience (at least their leader, "The AnKing"). I hope they figure out a good leadership situation, and make stronger commitments to openness.
Anki is in a very solid position to be forked if anything happens, so even if this is bad news I have faith in the larger community.
As someone who has used Anki for a decade, a thank you to dae for everything. Best of luck in your future endeavours.
With that out of the way, some thoughts:
- Anki is in a really good position to work around enshitification. The app, at least to me, is "complete" - the only additional features that might pique my curiosity is a different scheduler (at the moment, they're integrating a newer one, although I don't follow enough to know the state of it). Additionally, modern Anki is really well architected: the core of it is a Rust library, that is used by all of the platforms [0]. You can write new front ends using that, or just fork the existing FOSS ones. Maybe dae does a gorhill and gives us Anki Origin.
- Really the only service-y part of Anki I use is AnkiWeb, which is basically a backup and sync system. Wonder how that'll evolve (if they do end up charging for it, I hope it is "Obsidian" reasonable). EDIT: Ooo, Anki has public server software for running your own version. Awesome! [1]
- The idea outcome in my opinion would have been some form of charitable organisation (Linux Foundation?), with people donating to support Anki.
- So, AnkiHub is a company that produces Anki flashcards, and they've scaled that quickly? Jeez. Obviously Quizlet proved there was a market for flashcards, but I didn't realise this was possible for Anki.
- No outside investment is... hopeful. Not quite sure what indicates that this company has the technical know-how to maintain it.
- I've heard too many stories of a maintainer or creative being "hopeful" about their new acquirers, only to regret it years down the line.
Can't help but wonder if it might not be time to start a FOSS alternative just in case Anki begins to decline.
It might not be the worst idea to do that anyway. Anki is great, but there's plenty of room for improvement. Off the top of my head, an architecture that doesn't involve fragile and finicky python bits and is designed to support multiple independent clients would be a nice step up (Telegram is a good model here — make a core lib with all the nuts and bolts which devs build clients around).
It was a fascinating symbiotic between nerdy med students from all over the world and an obscure open source flashcard app that originally targeted language learners. I've been part of that community for many years and would have never foreseen this outcome but in hindsight it seems the best path forward for anki.
I don't think it's just for nerdy med students nowadays. Who studied for Step I without it? And How? (And Why? :)
Amboss
Name checks out
On the plus side, the actually good mobile Anki client, AnkiDroid, remains out of the hands of this potentially questionable new entity.
(AnkiDroid has always been run independently, which is good, considering the state of the iOS client, which has always been neglected.)
True. It should however be noted that the most active maintainer of AnkiDroid will be joining the new entity:
> We’re currently talking to David Allison, a long-time core contributor to AnkiDroid, about working together on exactly these questions. His experience with AnkiDroid’s collaborative development is invaluable, and we’re grateful he’s willing to help us get this right. We’re incredibly excited to have him join us full-time to help propel Anki into the future.
What’s so bad about the paid iOS client? I remember it being expensive when I got it but it works fine for my use case (mix of getting me through part of med school, all of law school, and the just general shit I’d like to remember and learn). There’s definitely never been anything jarring about using it vs the Mac or windows clients but I’m happy for somebody to point out the problems I’ve been missing!
I use the official iOS client everyday. What’s wrong with it?
The (paid!) iOS client has always been a disappointment to me, and I've long been jealous of the open source Android one.
I don't mind so much that it's paid, given how much use I get for the price, but it sucks knowing it sucks and not being able to help make it better.
I've just bought it to support the developer, as it was according to his website his preferred way to support him.
Agreed. I’m particularly excited that they’ll be investing in the UI/UX.
I've used Flashcards Deluxe for years and been very happy (no affiliation):
https://orangeorapple.com/flashcards/
Easy to import and export my cards, plenty of options for tweaking the algorithms for my use.
> What We Don’t Know Yet
> Governance and decision-making: How decisions are made, who has final say, and how the community is heard
> Roadmap and priorities: What gets built when and how to balance competing needs
> The transition itself: How to bring in more support without disrupting what already works
In other words: they have no clue what to do next (https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/ankis-growing-up/68610/2#p-1905...)
From the posts, it sounds like the original maintainer was approaching the point where they'd just abandon it, so this overall seems like a better outcome than either abandonment or sale to a PE firm.
I'm an Anki user, on and off since 10 years or so, but was still confused. If I understood correctly, the entities here are:
- Anki, as set up by dae aka Damien, is like the brand name and desktop implementation with the spaced repetition algorithm
- AnkiWeb is what I thought this hub thing was. It's where you download decks
- AnkiHub is a third party (started by "AnKing", now 35 employees) who sells decks as a monthly subscription and has their content on the deep web (you need to create an account and agree to terms to even see a listing of what's there besides a few featured parts). This is who is getting ownership of the former two. Because they write that Anki will remain open source at its "core", I presume that means that things will, at best, stay stable rather than anything (like AnkiWeb the deck sharing platform) becoming open
- AnkiDroid is a separate open source project (an Android app). The corporation is hiring the main developer, but it's not yet clear to me whether they're just going to get paid to work more on AnkiDroid or if they're also getting other tasks
> - AnkiDroid is a separate open source project (an Android app). The corporation is hiring the main developer, but it's not yet clear to me whether they're just going to get paid to work more on AnkiDroid or if they're also getting other tasks
----
To copy from my message on Discord:
> I’m moving to a full-time position working on Anki [incl. AnkiWeb & AnkiMobile]. I’m really excited about this, but there’s a mountain of pending, somewhat undefined work which will need to be done, and it’ll need my full-time attention for a while.
> I’ll still be contributing to AnkiDroid, but I won’t be able to commit as much time as I am doing currently (at least for the first few months while things stabilize). I’ll be here on evenings/weekends, and will be contributing in other ways (hopefully: unified Note Editor, JS addons etc… ), but I expect to slow down with code contributions to ensure I’m staying on on top of PR reviews & general force multiplier work. I’m definitely Org Admin’ing for GSoC over the summer [assuming Google gives us the greenlight], it’s historically been a VERY light role.
> In all honesty: I’m expecting things to be business as usual, I have more than enough capacity to keep up with the notification queue. Even if I completely dropped off the planet, we’re a great team and the improvements would keep on flowing. AnkiDroid’s bus factor has been >>> 1 for a LONG time now.
https://discord.gg/qjzcRTx => https://discord.com/channels/368267295601983490/701922522836...
GSoC: https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/
(Same person as above but felt that this part had a separate purpose so I've moved it into its own comment)
The ecosystem is currently such that it seems hard to enshittify it. They say they have no intention of doing that and I believe it, but their vision of a healthy and good product might involve a fair price (for rich countries at least) whereas it was always free so far
Time will tell; it sounds like there's currently no plans either way, but it's also simply open enough that users can always just install the open source software and share decks with each other by whatever file transfer/sharing means. Everything that's already there won't simply go away. I'm going to keep using AnkiDroid and building the language deck I am working on
The iOS app has never been free and that's the way most people use it these days. Desktop computing is a niche.
This may be true, but as someone who picked up Anki as a desktop app back around 2009 it feels a little crazy.
I also can’t imagine making cards on a phone, given how much switching between apps/windows is involved and how poor mobile platforms are at multitasking. It’s difficult to envision it being anything but maddening.
Worth mentioning too is the FSRS algorithm for scheduling cards is implemented in separate libraries which are released under MIT license.
> AnkiWeb
Worth noting you don't need to use it. Anki comes with a syncserver implementation for a while now, and there are docker images too. It's worth it for the transfer speeds alone IMO.
Anki is under AGPL too, which has an anti-DRM clause, so many type of enshittification of anki or their addons (e.g. to prevent sharing of their decks) would be unenforceable too.
As such I see no obvious things that would be susceptible to enshittification here.
Aha [0], that is neat.
[0]: https://docs.ankiweb.net/sync-server.html
I've tried several times before to install syncserver using those pip instructions, on multiple platforms, without success.
Try docker: https://github.com/ankitects/anki/tree/main/docs/syncserver#...
This sounds concerning. Someone ought to back up the public AnkiWeb decks while we still can.
Possible alternative to check out (not affiliated):
https://mochi.cards/
Looks nice but being an Electron-based app is a huge dealbreaker for me.
Good on him, 19 years is a long time to carry the flame. Thanks for getting me through school!
At a fundamental level the algorithms predict the probability of a learner to correctly recollect a factoid at a given point in time given a history of sampling that recollection / presentation.
It would be interesting to have machine learning predict these probability evolutions instead. Simply recollecting tangential knowledge improves the recollection of a non-sampled factoid, which is hard to model in a strict sense, or perhaps easy for (undiscovered) dedicated analytic models. Having good performing but relatively opaque (high parameter counts) ML models could be helpful because we can treat the high parameter count ML model as surrogate humans for memory recollection experiments and try to find low parameter count models (analytic or ML) that adequately distill the learning patterns, without having to do costly human-hour experiments on actual human brains.
Isn't FSRS (the new algorithm used in Anki since a few years ago) already based on machine learning?
Yes. Stochastic gradient descent, to be precise.
https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/The...
This is being actively researched (in the open!). https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/srs-benchmark
I always though Damien earns well with the iOS mobile version. Does he also pass it to AnkiHub too so they can earn from the app sales?
In a nice and controlled manner, so seemingly no reason to panic just yet:
> I ended up suggesting to them that we look into gradually transitioning business operations and open source stewardship over, with provisions in place to ensure that Anki remains open source and true to the principles I’ve run it by all these years.
> This is a step back for me rather than a goodbye - I will still be involved with the project, albeit at a more sustainable level.
From AnkiHub:
> No enshittification. We’ve seen what happens when VC-backed companies acquire beloved tools. That’s not what this is. There are no investors involved, and we’re not here to extract value from something the community built together. Building in the right safeguards and processes to handle pressure without stifling necessary improvements is something we’re actively considering.
Relieved at that part where they say there are no investors involved, makes the whole thing a whole lot less risky. Good for everyone involved, and here's to many more years with Anki :)
Yeah my first thought on seeing the headline was “Uh-oh. Time to replace Anki.”
But finding out there are no VCs, no investors, I’ll stay with Anki for now.
But still, these HN comments - after an announcement like this - are usually a good place to find out about replacements.
Might as well give a recommendation then: I've been using hashcards [0] for a few weeks now and have enjoyed its simplicity and the fact that it all stays forever in raw markdown files and versioned git. A simple justfile has also been helpful.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264492
Well every company claims no enshittification when they get acquired, in the end that's rarely the case. It's like Private Equity buying a company out and say "Nothing will change"
The key difference is the outside investors, who more times than not has no interest in what's best for users ultimately.
AnkiHub people seem kind of slimy in my experience (at least their leader, "The AnKing"). I hope they figure out a good leadership situation, and make stronger commitments to openness.
Anki is in a very solid position to be forked if anything happens, so even if this is bad news I have faith in the larger community.
Even in the worst-case scenario, Anki is already perfect for me as is.
As someone who has used Anki for a decade, a thank you to dae for everything. Best of luck in your future endeavours.
With that out of the way, some thoughts:
- Anki is in a really good position to work around enshitification. The app, at least to me, is "complete" - the only additional features that might pique my curiosity is a different scheduler (at the moment, they're integrating a newer one, although I don't follow enough to know the state of it). Additionally, modern Anki is really well architected: the core of it is a Rust library, that is used by all of the platforms [0]. You can write new front ends using that, or just fork the existing FOSS ones. Maybe dae does a gorhill and gives us Anki Origin.
- Really the only service-y part of Anki I use is AnkiWeb, which is basically a backup and sync system. Wonder how that'll evolve (if they do end up charging for it, I hope it is "Obsidian" reasonable). EDIT: Ooo, Anki has public server software for running your own version. Awesome! [1]
- The idea outcome in my opinion would have been some form of charitable organisation (Linux Foundation?), with people donating to support Anki.
- So, AnkiHub is a company that produces Anki flashcards, and they've scaled that quickly? Jeez. Obviously Quizlet proved there was a market for flashcards, but I didn't realise this was possible for Anki.
- No outside investment is... hopeful. Not quite sure what indicates that this company has the technical know-how to maintain it.
- I've heard too many stories of a maintainer or creative being "hopeful" about their new acquirers, only to regret it years down the line.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46299897
[1]: https://docs.ankiweb.net/sync-server.html
Oh for fucks sakes. No please no.
AnkiHub was already annoying with shoving AI into their Add-On without anyone asking for it.
I don't think this will go well
Can't help but wonder if it might not be time to start a FOSS alternative just in case Anki begins to decline.
It might not be the worst idea to do that anyway. Anki is great, but there's plenty of room for improvement. Off the top of my head, an architecture that doesn't involve fragile and finicky python bits and is designed to support multiple independent clients would be a nice step up (Telegram is a good model here — make a core lib with all the nuts and bolts which devs build clients around).
> make a core lib with all the nuts and bolts which devs build clients around
That is modern Anki. The core is a Rust library, which all the clients (desktop, web, Android and iOS) use. [0]
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46299897
I learned something today, thank you.
Even so, I believe there's room for another open competitor or two in this space.
It's not FOSS but Mochi [0] is a pretty good alternative.
[0] https://mochi.cards/