Simplenote

Not only is the service not fully open source (it was listed as open source here before - now corrected to "free" (as in beer, not birds)), the privacy policy is every bit as alarming as for any other service that "for free" stores your information on its servers in unencrypted format in US juridiction, including that they may sell it. From the privacy policy (10th January 2017):

Automattic, Inc may sell, transfer or otherwise share some or all of its assets, including your personally identifiable information...

Careful what you put into Simplenote, therefore. And follow the default advice for cloud services: put on other people's servers (services) only things you wouldn't mind becoming public/published.

For a much more private, open source alternative, try Turtl. It might not be mature/stable enough yet though, so check back every now and again to see if it will serve your needs. Otherwise, Laverna is also a good online note-taking app with security built in. It's also open source and supports markdown, unlike Simplenote.

[Edited by JohnFastman, March 10]

Everywhere you turn, Simplenote is celebrated as wonderfully convenient and brilliant for productivity. Oh, and it's free, didn't you know? But in truth, it's not very private - at least in principle. Your information is stored with a 3rd party in a form they can read and which they can give away to others (in fact they have to if the NSA asks). In that respect, your Simplenote data is every bit as vulnerable as it is in Dropbox or Evernote (both of which have been hacked before: see here for Dropbox, here for Evernote).

The alternative is Turtl. All the same and - in many cases - better features and, crucially, it's end-to-end encrypted. That means your data is encrypted using your password (don't forget it!) before it leaves your computer. The server responsible for syncing and the admins responsible for Turtl can't read your notes. If hackers get it they won't be able to read your data. And if the NSA asks for it, it won't matter: it's encrypted.

Not convinced?

Things that Simplenote and Turtl BOTH have:

• open source (Simplenote not fully, it seems)
• pay nothing
• tags
• markdown support
• note sharing
• instant search
• supports Windows, Mac, Linux & Android
• sync hosted in US

What Turtl has that Simplenote doesn't:

• end-to-end encryption (much better privacy: Turtl can't give your data away to others)
• browser plugins for bookmarking
• multi-word tags
• attach images and other files
• note previews
• active development (Simplenote hasn't evolved much recently)

What Simplenote has that Turtl doesn't:

• iOS app (Turtl is working on it now...)

Compare the privacy policies: Here for Turtl, here for Simplenote. Then think about where you want your notes to live.

Altough, this application is mentioned as open-source, it's not.
The service is centralised and no mention on its licensing is provided on the official site.

Ok, there are some clients published on Github under a free license here:
https://github.com/Automattic.
But that doesn't mean i can inspect the server code, modify it and redisribute in the sense of the OSI definition (https://opensource.org/licenses)

I could write an open-source client for Instapaper (It's now free in an unlimited version).
Would it mean that it's now an opensource software ?
To get real opensource alternatives to Evernote, please take a look at Laverna or Paperwork for instance.

So please, edit the license field and set FREE or FREEMIUM instead

[Edited by thierryl, January 07]

so this is not really open source? only the app clients are open source and not the source code responsible for all the actual features and processes which power the app?

Simplenote is a very nice app. Fast, Intuitive, Clean, Syncronize.
But one bad point that does not use image files.