[HN Gopher] Anki ownership transferred to AnkiHub
___________________________________________________________________
Anki ownership transferred to AnkiHub
Author : trms
Score : 540 points
Date : 2026-02-02 20:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (forums.ankiweb.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (forums.ankiweb.net)
| embedding-shape wrote:
| 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 :)
| sivers wrote:
| 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.
| sodality2 wrote:
| 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
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| 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"
| embedding-shape wrote:
| The key difference is the outside investors, who more times
| than not has no interest in what's best for users ultimately.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| Outside investors want profits. A company with thirty-five
| employees wants profits. I don't see a meaningful
| difference.
| watwut wrote:
| Owner of the thirty-five employees company wants long
| term income and sort of security. They usually do not
| want huge peek in short term followed by death. They are
| also less comfortable with strategy that has 95% chance
| of destroying the company and 0.5% chance is earning a
| lot with 5% in between.
|
| Outside investors are the exact opposite.
|
| Also, smaller owners do not have that billionaire mindset
| of "any unethical or illegal action goes". It is not like
| they would be saints, but there is range of personalities
| and value systems among them. Billionaire became
| billionaires because not caring about any of that gives
| them advantage.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Give it a try to work in both, see what work gets
| prioritized VS not in each of them. Makes a huge
| difference, in my experience. Investors are counting on
| eventually getting paid 10x or nothing, employees
| generally expect a monthly salary and a Christmas bonus,
| this massively change what direction they think the
| company should be on.
| glfharris wrote:
| Sadly, their entire business is built on paywalling content the
| community built and distributed for free.
| bingobangobungo wrote:
| Good on him, 19 years is a long time to carry the flame. Thanks
| for getting me through school!
| infotainment wrote:
| 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.)
| __float wrote:
| 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.
| 3D30497420 wrote:
| Agreed. I'm particularly excited that they'll be investing in
| the UI/UX.
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| I've just bought it to support the developer, as it was
| according to his website his preferred way to support him.
| divan wrote:
| Is it still 25$ price? Makes it impossible to recommend Anki
| to friends/students to "try spaced repetition".
| Larrikin wrote:
| Just have them use it on their computer or the web?
|
| It improved my grades so much in college that I spent the
| 25 bucks as a broke student so I could have it on my second
| hand iPad. This was before AnkiDroid even existed so it's
| amazing the price is still the same.
| divan wrote:
| That works for people who already convinced that they
| want to use it. I'm talking about people who've heard it
| for the first time and they're not going to spend 25$ for
| some new app just to try. 25$ is unusually high price for
| an AppStore app and it's just doesn't work unless you're
| really determined to use it. I don't understand why
| people are downvoting this.
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| They can just use the computer version then, and buy it
| when they know it's useful for them?
| divan wrote:
| Some people would need to buy computer first. Again, it's
| very hard to recommend mobile app to people if you need
| to add these kind of "workarounds". Especially for the
| main target audience - young students - many of whom live
| in their mobile phones and not used to spend 25$ for
| apps.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| They can try it on desktop and web for free if they are
| that skeptical.
| divan wrote:
| Can you imagine, a lot of young people don't have
| desktop/laptop, only mobile.
| Larrikin wrote:
| I would argue that it's almost impossible to start first
| with the mobile version so this situation should never
| happen. The computer version is essential for setting up
| and getting decks. The web version remains free as well.
| divan wrote:
| Why would it be the case?
|
| Anki app has an interface for adding/editing cards, and
| can absolutely be used without AnkiWeb or syncing. In
| fact, this is how I used it myself for years. I would
| argue that using AnkiWeb and syncing is an advanced
| feature for people who got the taste of having own decks
| and don't want to loose it.
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| The web client works just fine!
| divan wrote:
| "Hey, there is an amazing app for learning, but it costs
| 25$ for your iPhone, so just use web version instead".
|
| Very appealing, makes people try app immediately. :)
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| I think you essentially have to use the desktop version
| no matter what--so the real dichotomy is whether you want
| to use a free program with free online hosting with the
| bundled (free) web application... or if you want to buy a
| $25 app.
|
| It seems a lot like saying nobody should use GMail unless
| they agree to pay for premium Google Services.
| divan wrote:
| I don't have this problem. I bought iOS Anki app for
| myself many years ago. What I found hard is to recommend
| it to others, who never heard about spaced repetition
| yet, especially to young students, who arguably is the
| main target audience for this kind of tools. They just
| not jumping into buying 25$ app to try it. As soon as you
| start mentioning switching to laptop, using web/desktop -
| they're not jumping into it either. I don't know maybe
| you all have different experience, but that's what I
| experienced over the years and it always felt sad,
| because this price is a prohibitively high for many
| people.
| pushedx wrote:
| I use the iOS app daily, and while it's not the prettiest
| thing in the world, it has nearly every feature of the
| desktop client, including full scripting support for card
| contents, which is amazing for things like collapsable
| elements and media. And, at the end of the day, it's about
| what you learn from using it that matters.
| avazhi wrote:
| 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!
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| I paid 30EUR for Anki on iOS. I remember being a bit upset
| because the Android and the macOS version (Qt based) are
| completely free. Even the iOS version is open-source. In the
| end, I did not want to create my own build and sideload Anki
| for iOS via Developer certificates, so I just paid the 30EUR.
| I think it is too expensive especially since I can easily
| afford that having a job and all, but I remember at uni I
| would struggle to afford this. But then again, when I was at
| uni there were no smartphones, and my computer cost less than
| an iPhone. So I'd probably have cheap android anyway.
|
| To amend, I got way more than 30EUR of value out of it. I
| learn a new language, and vocab training with Anki works
| better than anything else.
| Jacobinski wrote:
| 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.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| anki has so much potential and has such a big and unique
| audience, it is incomprehensible to me how it has managed to
| be so neglected.
|
| and then now why, of all times, when a solo developer is
| never more productive, would the lead maintainer cede
| ownership? the antidote for programming burnout has just been
| invented, just take it haha
| TheDong wrote:
| My experience using AI is that it wildly increases burnout,
| not decreases it.
|
| Writing code is fun. Solving interesting problems is fun.
|
| Debugging deep problems is fun.
|
| Debugging slop code is a painful suffering experience,
| having to constantly double check that the AI agent didn't
| just change the unit tests to "return true" and lie to you
| is tiring, and the feeling that you can't significantly
| improve the tool burns me out hard.
|
| That last one can't be overstated. When I find a weird
| behavior that looks like a bug in the linux kernel or rustc
| or such, I find it exhilarating to read code and understand
| what the bug is, how it got there, and to feel like I can
| fix it and never see it again.
|
| When claude code gives me a "wrong" output for my prompt, I
| don't feel like there's any possible way I can go and find
| what part of the Opus 4.5 model resulted in it not being
| able to give better output.
|
| I feel helpless to debug what went wrong when claude code
| spirals into the deep end.
|
| I can add more initial context, add skills, but those are
| tiny heuristic tweaks around the giant mass of
| incomprehensible weights and biases that no human
| understands.
|
| The antidote for programming burnout is not to replace all
| the fun parts of programming with painful probabilistic
| suffering.
| drakonka wrote:
| I've been using Anki for a few years and have never
| experienced it as neglected. There are regular updates and
| a big community contributing knowledge, add-ins, etc.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| Yeah, and while they say AnkiDroid is going to be maintained
| by the original creator separate from AnkiHub, we won't be
| privy to any employment contract language that makes any work
| done by the employee as being property of AnkiHub. Which
| would be an issue.
| Tarq0n wrote:
| A contributor's license agreement would overrule the terms
| of the employment contract, assuming they set one up
| properly.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Why would that be an issue?
| KPGv2 wrote:
| Because it would mean any contribution by AnkiDroid's
| owner to AnkiDroid would be considered property of his
| new employer, AnkiHub.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| I use the official iOS client everyday. What's wrong with it?
| ohyoutravel wrote:
| iOS one is fine, pretty good. I use it daily too. Ankidroid
| is much better, which I would attribute to being open source
| with lots of eyeballs on it and making improvements for the
| love of it.
| DeusExMachina wrote:
| I also use it every day. It does its job, but it has many
| usability issues that make it less than ideal.
|
| For example, copy and paste retains the text color (probably
| by design). So, sometimes I get black text on a black
| background, when the app is in dark mode.
|
| The editing process to remove the formatting is pretty
| annoying.
|
| It takes me time to find the edit button, which is buried in
| the menu but prominent in the desktop version. Then, I have
| to toggle the HTML mode and delete the retained tags, which
| on a phone takes time. The desktop version, instead, has a
| button to remove all formatting.
| Elidrake24 wrote:
| The App uses the Mac Text element rather than a custom one,
| so it'll have the same shortcuts as all of them; `| Shift
| [?] Option [?] Command V` to paste and match the formatting
| of the current field (in the case of a blank field, remove
| formatting).
| ztjio wrote:
| Try pasting into an app/textbox that doesn't support any
| formatting then copy/paste from there.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| I do too, and I hate it. Some of my pet peeves from the top
| of my head (there would be more most likely if I'd think a
| bit, but maybe later): > I keep pressing
| the second button to OK a card, I rarely use the 3rd and 4th.
| But if I fail a card, that button becomes a NOK, and I keep
| pressing it out of reflex > I can't help interpreting
| "card was a leech" notification other than "how dumb can you
| be". Fortunately there is no way to turn it off. > It
| keeps phoning home for some reason, each time it gets into
| the foreground. It is really great when you are behind a
| proxy, and it keeps complaining that there is no network,
| every single time. Of course that call can't be turned off.
| Also, have no idea what it sends home. I try to trust that
| it's not some nefarious. > Some years ago, for some
| reason Anki changed DB format, in a backwards incompatible
| way. There was a notification at the start of the app, that
| if I don't want it, I shouldn't update my app. I did turn off
| auto-update. A few weeks later it bricked my deck (my deck
| got updated to the new format, even though that old iOS app
| was the only way I accessed it), also trashing my 3 years
| long strike.
| tvshtr wrote:
| AnkiDroid is *just* an interface over the shared core/engine
| (written in rust nowadays)
| mbanerjeepalmer wrote:
| Given that push notifications haven't worked in AnkiDroid for
| years, it doesn't feel good to me?
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| Why would you need push notifications on AnkiDroid?
| lovestory wrote:
| Duolingo effect, people will forget to do the learning if
| they are not reminded
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| I prefer Apps that won't manipulate me. Duolingo is
| annoying. Anki is a habit after a certain point
| watwut wrote:
| Reminder is not manipulation.
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| Those used by Duolingo definitely are
| padraic7a wrote:
| Just one data point but they work for me. (Nothing phone,
| android 16, Ankidroid 2.23.3 installed from Fdroid)
| david_allison wrote:
| Notifications work extremely badly.
|
| We've got a setting [developer options only] which
| completely reimplements them, it won't be live for 2.24,
| but hopefully 2.25
|
| https://github.com/ericli3690/gsoc-ankidroid-
| report/blob/mai...
| siva7 wrote:
| 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.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I don't think it's just for nerdy med students nowadays. Who
| studied for Step I without it? And How? (And Why? :)
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| Amboss
| NewsaHackO wrote:
| Step 1 is pass/fail now. If I had to redo it and just pass, I
| don't think it would be necessary to use anki now (except
| maybe for something Sketchy).
| dogmatism wrote:
| If one is of a certain age, of course they studied for step I
| without it
|
| and the classic method was the inspiration for Anki to begin
| with: making your own flashcards on index cards! You could do
| a version of spaced repetition by shuffling the deck.
|
| Not sure the digital version is actually easier or more
| effective
| n8henrie wrote:
| Amazing. A few nerdy med students and I started a student group
| for tech back in 2009 or so, a big part early on was preaching
| Mnemosyne (another SRS app), with shared decks syncing over a
| free Dropbox account.
|
| Later used Repetitions (iOS / Mac / web) for the steps, EM
| boards, and informatics boards most recently.
|
| Only within the last year finally tried Anki -- and this time
| for language.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Does the community have extensive medicine syllabus as decks? I
| got 429ed from searching their decks.
| GaggiX wrote:
| Even in the worst-case scenario, Anki is already perfect for me
| as is.
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| 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.
| azeirah wrote:
| This is being actively researched (in the open!).
| https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/srs-benchmark
| flexagoon wrote:
| Isn't FSRS (the new algorithm used in Anki since a few years
| ago) already based on machine learning?
| runarberg wrote:
| Yes. Stochastic gradient descent, to be precise.
|
| https://github.com/open-spaced-
| repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/The...
| dragontamer wrote:
| Too old school and too effective.
|
| FSRS just works, even without a GPU so it's not the cool kind
| of AI / machine learning these days.
|
| No joke though: the FSRS model is marvelous, and Anki remains
| one of the best free + open source implementations around.
|
| I've been learning German recently and Anki (in FSRS mode) is
| one of the most important learning tools I have. No joke.
|
| ------
|
| Every card remembers every rating you give it, as well as the
| time / date. This allows for Anki to solve for a 'forgetting
| curve', and predict when different cards have a chance to be
| forgotten.
|
| There is furthermore the machine learning / stochastic
| descent algorithm to better fit the assumed forgetting curves
| to your historical performance. This is the FSRS Optimize
| parameters button in the settings panel.
| NormenKD wrote:
| Possible alternative to check out (not affiliated):
|
| https://mochi.cards/
| crumbo wrote:
| Looks nice but being an Electron-based app is a huge
| dealbreaker for me.
| arjie wrote:
| I imagine it's for Anki users and Anki already embeds a HTML
| engine (for the cards).
| Gormo wrote:
| I don't think the main objection that people have to
| Electron is that it includes HTML rendering functionality.
| A proper desktop application that includes an HTML renderer
| for content formatting is a very different thing from a
| framework that implements an application entirely as an
| encapsulated webapp.
| cvhc wrote:
| I've been paying for the pro version for a while. It's
| templating is really powerful and easy to use. For my vocab
| deck, I set up a input field (e.g., word) and a bunch of
| derived fields (dict definition, AI-generated example, TTS
| audio). To add a new card, I just input the word and other
| fields will be automatically populated.
|
| Technically this can be implemented in Anki as an addon. But
| only the desktop version supports addons and the default UI is
| a bit too complicated.
| treetalker wrote:
| Mochi has really come a long way and has some wonderful built-
| in functionality. The automatic text-to-speech template options
| are high quality and randomize a variety of voices in each
| language. It's also doing some cool things with dynamic cards
| and LLMs.
|
| Impressively, Mochi now offers FSRS (beta but still available
| in the app's main settings) and both the type of scheduler
| (Mochi default or FSRS) and the schedulers' settings are
| configurable on a deck-by-deck basis.
|
| The developer is very responsive to folks on the forum and
| often quickly adds requested features.
|
| Overall the app is well-designed and fun to use. I appreciate
| the swipe left/right to fail/pass cards on iOS. My one
| complaint is that the web clipper only works with Chrome and
| Firefox, but not with Safari (surprisingly). It would also be
| useful to have a global hotkey/palette to quick-add cards to
| various decks, similar to how OmniFocus lets you quickly add
| items to the OF Inbox.
| saubeidl wrote:
| Can you import Anki decks and review history?
| surrTurr wrote:
| > 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...)
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| 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.
| account42 wrote:
| That remains to be seen. Many things are much worse than
| "abandonment" for completed software.
| nsilvestri wrote:
| Community focused organizations like this are hard to run
| without governance transitions. I think Anki brings value to
| the world and anyone willing to take on a leadership role in
| keeping it going should be given trust and grace to make the
| best decisions they can with the knowledge they have. I wish
| them luck.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Knowing what they don't know puts them ahead of many
| organizations.
| iterance wrote:
| Many community-oriented programs have failed after acquisition
| because they came out too firm, too decided, and too
| purposeful, only to realize the community is still skeptical
| and turning against them six months in.
|
| Honestly, for a program like Anki, starting out by saying "we
| need to figure out what good governance looks like, as well as
| what might be agreeable and possible for everyone involved" is
| a much stronger positioning than coming up with something that
| may or may not fly to try make a strong first impression.
| Communities do not follow the conventional rules of American
| business.
| stevage wrote:
| I actually really appreciate the honesty of this. Much better
| than undue confidence.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It seems more than a little bit careless to agree on a deal
| without having those very important things hammered out. What
| if there is disagreement about these?
| atoav wrote:
| Or: They don't want to force a specific governance model onto
| an existing community.
|
| I have no deep insight here, but given the times I have seen a
| negative reaction from the community with ownership changes or
| similar, giving yourself time to figure out how to do things
| may actually be a good thing.
| Aachen wrote:
| 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
| Aachen wrote:
| (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
| runarberg wrote:
| Worth mentioning too is the FSRS algorithm for scheduling
| cards is implemented in separate libraries which are released
| under MIT license.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The iOS app has never been free and that's the way most
| people use it these days. Desktop computing is a niche.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| 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.
| 7jjjjjjj wrote:
| Desktop for creating cards, mobile for reviewing them.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I prefer a laptop for reviewing because it's still
| portable, but also more amenable to comfort for longer
| sessions and makes spot corrections easier.
| angeladarby077 wrote:
| Who is this
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| That's how some people do their "computing" these days,
| if they do any that deserves the name at all. I had to do
| some of that on vacation. With a modern phone it's
| possible, but mentally taxing. Phones feel like MS-DOS
| operating systems, where each application is fullscreen.
| Most people are just consumers. This is probably true for
| Anki decks as well. Only a small minority creates decks,
| the vast majority only consumes.
| rjh29 wrote:
| In America perhaps. Android is more popular in other
| countries, most people I know use Anki for free. The
| desktop app and sync are useful for editing cards and
| managing a large collection. Both of those are free too,
| but for how long?
| Aachen wrote:
| Why'd people choose a closed ecosystem but then care about
| open software? I assume the main crowd is on AnkiDroid,
| either via f-droid or google play, and that the few iOS
| people don't care about a new corporation taking over the
| rights
| Gormo wrote:
| > The iOS app has never been free and that's the way most
| people use it these days.
|
| Where are you getting the stats that drive this claim? How
| are you measuring usage on platforms that don't necessarily
| collect usage metrics, e.g. desktop versions?
| deaux wrote:
| It's very unlikely that a majority of Anki users only uses
| the iOS app.
|
| 1. Anki isn't your everyday application with your everyday
| audience.
|
| 2. The number of people willing to splash $25 on an iOS
| flashcard app without first having tried it for free
| elsewhere, is incredibly small.
| digiown wrote:
| > 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.
| pityJuke wrote:
| Aha [0], that is neat.
|
| [0]: https://docs.ankiweb.net/sync-server.html
| bangonkeyboard wrote:
| I've tried several times before to install syncserver using
| those pip instructions, on multiple platforms, without
| success.
| david_allison wrote:
| Try docker: https://github.com/ankitects/anki/tree/main/d
| ocs/syncserver#...
| dhoe wrote:
| Just as a counterpoint, to avoid people getting the wrong
| idea about the complexity involved - I use it and it took
| literally minutes. The most confusing part was that the
| sync settings in Ankidroid referred to Ankiweb.
| david_allison wrote:
| Hey, could you put in an issue, especially regarding the
| pain points, but also including what 'seems unusual':
| https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android
|
| It's mostly due to time/resource/technical constraints
| [some of our strings come from a shared backend], but we
| can do better here, especially if there's now a lot more
| community interest in the feature.
|
| Pull requests welcome! Do feel free to get in touch on
| the issue/Discord.
| dhoe wrote:
| Was about to do that, but it turned out it's already
| fixed in the current version - so literally the only
| minor issue I hit on my way to a custom sync server is
| resolved already :)
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| The pip instructions are bad. Typical Python things: Non-
| reproducible, not involving a proper lock file. Cargo
| instructions seem not much better, since they are only
| referring to a tag in the git repo. The installation from
| "package build" leak user and password in shell history.
|
| Overall this doesn't inspire much confidence in how solid
| and tested the procedure is.
| david_allison wrote:
| The page is on GitHub:
|
| https://github.com/ankitects/anki-
| manual/blob/main/src/sync-...
|
| Full disclaimer - it's a feature which AnkiDroid
| supports, but isn't one which I use.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I see. I am not claiming, that it is your job to fix
| that.
|
| On that page though, the same issues are present. The pip
| install does not make use of any lock file.
| pip install anki
|
| Isn't a command we should be seeing in 2026. Unless it is
| a one-off experiment setup. There should be proper lock
| files, not just version numbers, especially in the Python
| and JS ecosystems this has become less and less
| acceptable. SYNC_USER1=user:pass
| ~/syncserver/bin/python -m anki.syncserver
|
| Leaks username and password to shell command history.
| Again, can be fine for a one-off quick hack, but is not a
| great practice, since the shell command history is not
| the most secure place to store ones credentials in. This
| could be easily mitigated by adding leading " " (space),
| at least in environments I am familiar with, but better
| would probably be putting the credentials in a config
| file, so that they never hit the shell command history.
|
| The repo already has a lock file for uv. It would be
| better to make use of that lock file, when using Python
| to install. And in fact, when one downloads a release of
| Anki for desktop and runs it the first time, it does make
| use of uv, creating a venv, and (unconfirmed) hopefully
| makes use of the uv lock file.
|
| I see these kinds of issues very frequently in Python
| projects. As someone, who has previously worked on
| providing docker images for data science workflows,
| enabling reproducible research, I am quite sensitive to
| this. But also I hear from friends, that they are
| traumatized by Python projects installing things in
| system python and other shenanigans. In general there
| seem to be tons of people doing Python projects, who
| don't have a clear idea of how to make things safe and
| reproducible, which is giving Python projects in general
| a bad reputation. All while good solutions to these
| problems exist and existed for years.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| In fairness, Python as an ecosystem doesn't make it
| clear, either. I used to write a ton of Python back in
| the v2 days. I came back to Python to write a web crawler
| in summer 2025 and couldn't believe how it was still a
| bunch of arcane commands to create a virtual environment
| and install dependencies and capture the dependencies.
| Yes, an IDE like Pycharm handles this (thank goodness),
| but jiminy crickets, why doesn't "pip" refuse to even
| _work_ until you 've done "pip init" which generates a
| requirements.txt and then every pip install should check
| for a requirements.txt in the PWD. If it doesn't exist,
| refuse to install the dep. If the file does exist, append
| the version of the dep to that file.
|
| It's 2026. Even JavaScript can do this.
|
| pip is the de facto manager for the entire language. It
| should be better. With Node Package Manager for JS, the
| installation default is at the project level. You have to
| do a command line override to install globally.
|
| PIP is the opposite. In fact, the only way to install at
| the project level is to create a virtual environment and
| trick PIP into thinking it's installing at the global
| level!
|
| What language operates like this in 2026? Maven installs
| at the project level. Unison at the project level.
| Haskell at the project level. JS/TS at the project level.
| eudamoniac wrote:
| This sounds concerning. Someone ought to back up the public
| AnkiWeb decks while we still can.
| david_allison wrote:
| > - 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/
| Aachen wrote:
| Information on Discord visible only if you sign up for it
| (and afaik, in some countries, upload identification)... that
| does seem rather in line with the deep web architecture that
| AnkiHub uses. Maybe this would be good in a ticket or the
| Anki forums, since it's relevant to the people using and
| contributing to the app. Here on HN it's now also findable in
| web searches as a side effect of copying it I guess
| david_allison wrote:
| This is the Discord server which AnkiDroid has used for dev
| for just under 6 years. Nothing AnkiHub related.
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| 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
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| 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).
| pityJuke wrote:
| > 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
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I learned something today, thank you.
|
| Even so, I believe there's room for another open competitor
| or two in this space.
| knubie wrote:
| It's not FOSS but Mochi [0] is a pretty good alternative.
|
| [0] https://mochi.cards/
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| I don't think anyone will comfortable pour 1000 hours into
| a closed source app. Especially because Anki is what it is
| today due to the numerous add ons
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| Anki already is FOSS and AGPLv3, so we can always fork
| pityJuke wrote:
| 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
| mpawelski wrote:
| 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?
| kyorochan wrote:
| 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.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| I have this vague sense that this is the opinion of many people
| in the Anki community many years ago when I last used it (to
| improve my German vocabulary before my first child was born--
| with whom I speak German).
|
| I was reminded that AnkiHub's business model is selling Anki
| add-ons.
|
| So it seems clear they would decline to add competing features
| to Anki, but instead create an add-on to sell instead, and
| never add it as a feature to Anki.
| greenburger wrote:
| 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.
| deaux wrote:
| > Absolutely. Anki's _core code_ will remain open source, guided
| by the same principles that have guided the project from the
| beginning.
|
| Already caveating with the "core" code. Even without PE and VC,
| it's clear that a company with 35 employees is bound to take this
| in a different direction than 1 guy, and not a good one. If there
| comes a day where those 35 employees can't be sustained anymore
| by revenue, and the choice is between enshittification and
| shutting down/firing everyone, we'll see what happens. That's the
| big difference - such a decision was never on the cards, or at
| least much less likely, when run by a single person. Now it will
| be.
|
| Big conflict of interests too. AnkiHub makes money from selling
| paid addons. No chance any of those will ever end up in Anki now.
|
| Also not a good look that they immediately locked the thread in
| their most popular community.
| tpoacher wrote:
| I love anki.
|
| But upon reading this I think it's high time I exported all my
| notes in simple text format, just in case.
|
| Maybe also try Fernando Borretti's flashcard app I saw (and
| dismissed) recently here
| dddddaviddddd wrote:
| Anki uses a SQLite database for all its data, so it's already
| an open format.
| EE84M3i wrote:
| Anki also regularly takes local backups.
| Timpy wrote:
| I discovered Anki 12 years ago while living in Japan. I was
| trying my hardest and absolutely failing to remember any of the
| Japanese I was studying. Maybe I was due for a learning-style
| renaissance for myself and Anki was just the catalyst, but it
| really made a positive impact on my life. More than just
| memorizing kanji on AnkiDroid during my commute, I just started
| to believe I could learn anything. I was starting to take my
| coding hobby more seriously at the time and hacking on Anki was a
| big part of that too. Thanks for all the hard work Damien and
| David Allison. I'm so grateful for the software you've worked on.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Same for me. I was doing my PhD in another country and was just
| overwhelmed and disoriented at the sheer scale of information I
| suddenly had to remember and digest. Anki was on again/off
| again for me at first, but once I learned to edit and update
| the cards and add my own, I really began to understand how to
| boil concepts down into something I could remember, i.e. I
| could structure it to my own personal chaotic mode of thinking,
| and I've flourished with it since then
| igleria wrote:
| I've been barely keeping my head above water (ok, much better
| than that honestly) for 35 years intellectually due to lack
| of more methodical learning. Your post might convince me of
| trying Anki...
| tetris11 wrote:
| The real trick is not realising that its working until you
| stop using it :-)
| romes wrote:
| I think Anki, originally, was for studying Japanese too.
|
| And I recently wrote about making my own Anki Japanese cards in
| my blog[1]
|
| [1] https://alt-romes.github.io/posts/2026-01-30-from-side-
| proje...
| mister_mort wrote:
| You're right about that, Anki is named after the Japanese
| word for memorisation. (An Ji - anki "anki")
|
| https://jisho.org/word/%E6%9A%97%E8%A8%98
| Aldipower wrote:
| Same for me, while I learned Danish, which is even harder then
| Japanese.
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| Sorry if I'm missing an implied /s :D
|
| Ftr Danish is a category 1 language, while Japanese is
| category 4 ("https://2009-2017.state.gov/m/fsi/sls/orgovervie
| w/languages")
| maratc wrote:
| ... for the native speakers of _English_ which not all the
| people in the world are.
| Aldipower wrote:
| > Sorry if I'm missing an implied /s :D
|
| You caught me. ;-)
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| tbh I was perhaps also eager to reshare that website
| someone linked the other day :P I saw a chance and by
| golly I had to take it.
| ncphillips wrote:
| I've just started using Anki and I'm almost grieving. If I had
| had this 15 years ago I probably would have done so much better
| in school. I've always struggled with memorizing, but Anki has
| made this much easier for me. I started learning Japanese 4
| months ago and I'm baffled by how much I've retained in that
| period. Now I'm playing with using it to learn the rules for
| the OneRing TTPRG.
| scarrilho wrote:
| Same for me. I discovered spaced repetition through Anki. It
| helped me study Japanese, Agile, and countless other topics,
| and the Android and macOS apps work perfectly together. A
| friend used it so much that he ended up contributing to the
| Android app as OSS.
|
| > with provisions in place to ensure that Anki remains open
| source and true to the principles I've run it by all these
| years.
|
| I really hope this holds.
| pvab3 wrote:
| Is Anki that much better than, say, Quizlet?
| throwforfeds wrote:
| Agreed, Anki has really helped me with learning new languages.
| The creation of cards was always a slog though, so recently
| I've been playing with an Anki MCP server hooked up to Claude.
| I can dump my iTalki lessons in, or ask Claude to make cards
| based on a song I've been listening to, etc and get a bunch of
| relevant cards generated for me. It's honestly been kind of
| magic.
| jama211 wrote:
| That's... genius. This might get me using anki again, I gave
| up because of the friction of card creation. Thank you for
| this!
| throwforfeds wrote:
| You're welcome! Here's the one I've been using:
| https://github.com/ankimcp/anki-mcp-server
|
| I've definitely hit walls with Anki over the years, and
| while the community decks help a lot, it's really nice to
| just tell Claude "can you take this assignment my tutor
| gave me, extract all the infinitive verbs, and then make
| cloze style cards for conjugations at an A1/A2 level?" and
| get it all done in a couple minutes.
| krick wrote:
| I feel like there's a lot of confusion, so not sure if anyone can
| clear up mine, but I'm really struggling to see a significance of
| this.
|
| Obviously, like all ignorant people do, I am going to
| oversimplify things here. But still, to me, the "platonic idea"
| of Anki seems a dead simple thing. All what I care about when
| using Anki is what's on the 2 sides of a Card, a question +
| answer, which can only be some visual image (possibly encoded as
| text, possibly just JPEG, I really don't care as long as it fits
| in my mobile device memory) + optional sound. That's really it.
| If it should be bi-directional or uni-directional card is a
| detail of how the deck is generated/encoded, and the spaced
| repetition algorithm is a detail of the app that I use to study
| (so, usually AnkiDroid, I imagine -- an unaffiliated 3rd party;
| who even uses desktop apps nowadays?).
|
| So, I imagine there can exist (and do exist) some minor
| additional features, like an ability to require a typed answer
| for a card, but it seems pretty minor, and I really don't see a
| lot of room for the app to evolve.
|
| So, ultimately people need only a common .apkg format, which
| exists and is relatively simple (although I suppose it could've
| been even simplier), and a place like AnkiWeb, where people can
| share their decks, so Spanish top-2000 or basic integrals deck
| isn't re-invented over and over again. It's a pity that AnkiWeb
| isn't more open and will be even less open from now on, but as
| long as someone is willing to just host it (which is ultimately
| just paying for downloads traffic) it's easy to replicate, so no
| super-valuable IP here.
|
| Of course, a primary use-case for Anki is a tool to make decks,
| but you could really do with pretty simple python script +
| YAML/JSON/CSV/whatever metadata file to convert it to AnkiDroid-
| compatible .apkg file.
|
| So, basically, who cares? What is to "own" there?
| golem14 wrote:
| IMO, the add-on value is the repository of decks that exist
| (and may or may not be free).
|
| So an app-store of sorts.
|
| As others have said, there are some provisions in place that
| make it allegedly harder to do a hard landgrab and keep people
| from freely sharing decks, to to me, even if it were so, I
| would not be too concerned.
|
| In my opinion, the very act of creating one's deck is a _key
| part_ of the learning. Maybe it 's different for larning
| vocabulary, but as you said, it will be very hard to make those
| hard to share.
|
| Learning a deck generated by someone else has never been as
| effective with me, so I think it's a false sense of time saving
| to use those.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > All what I care about when using Anki is what's on the 2
| sides of a Card, a question + answer
|
| This is damn near the least effective way to use Anki. Cloze
| deletion alone surpasses this.
|
| Also, Anki is SRS. The value of Anki is in the rescheduling,
| not in the fact it's flashcards. And Anki has implemented the
| FSRS rescheduling algorithm, which is just one more feature not
| all flashcard apps do.
| Shank wrote:
| The community has been in a deadlock over making FSRS the default
| (https://github.com/ankitects/anki/issues/3616), and I wonder if
| this will lead to some resolution.
|
| It seems like the core things that Anki needs are new user
| experience improvements, and algorithm updates. SM2 really shows
| its age as compared to other algorithms.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| Is there that much of a difference?
| Ifkaluva wrote:
| As a user, it's a HUGE difference. FSRS leads to an
| incredibly reduced workload.
| watwut wrote:
| Yes, because intervals on some cards become absurdly large
| (4 years after seeing the card twice) .
| sambapa wrote:
| If the algorithm says so, so it is.
| mchaver wrote:
| Our data in the cloud, hallowed be thy computation, your
| kingdom come, your will be done, on our devices as it is
| in the cloud. Give us today our daily feed.
| cwnyth wrote:
| And forgive us for our typos, as we forgive those typo
| [sic] against us.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| This sounds like some absurd mis-optimization of
| parameters on your part.
| saubeidl wrote:
| Yeah, FSRS is _much_ better. For me it was the difference
| between learning 10 new words of Mandarin a day and learning
| 20, with the same time commitment.
| apt-apt-apt-apt wrote:
| Does using FSRS result in less retention, due to scheduling
| less reviews than other systems? Or is it actually more
| efficient in a meaningful way by cutting out unnecessary
| reviews?
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| The goal is of course the latter.
| jdahlin wrote:
| The goal of the scheduling algorithm is to predict the
| optimal time for when you need to review your card again.
| FSRS has a bunch of parameters tja you can customize
| based on previous learning attempts, usually a few 100
| cards is enough to adapt to your own learning abilities,
| but in current Anki versions you need to manually update
| the parameters to optimize your learning.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| To me it sounds like an incredible speed to learn even 10
| Mandarin words per day, let alone 20. So extreme, that I
| must wonder, what definition of "Mandarin words" and what
| definition of "learned" you are using, when you are writing
| that, or, that you are an extreme outlier in terms of
| memorizing visual information.
|
| For me really learning a word means: (1)
| Knowing how to say it. (2) Knowing how to write it,
| meaning the Chinese characters, of course. (3)
| Still remembering (1) and (2) after at least a month.
| (4) Being able to actually use the word correctly.
|
| Do you really learn 20 words properly under those
| definitions? If so, then respect. I consider myself to have
| quite a good memory for visual information, but if I don't
| try to memorize 20 words as a full-time activity on that
| day, and write them hundreds of times, I am fairly sure
| they won't stick for long, maybe not even until the next
| day. Some obviously will, and some have good explanations
| why the characters look as they do, but others don't, and
| feel arbitrarily constructed.
| coldblues wrote:
| You've just admitted that the way you use "learn" is
| different. It's you who is using it differently from the
| commonly agreed upon way. (3) is arbitrary, ideally you
| would want to remember the words for your entire
| lifetime. A lot of people don't care about (2), you'd
| only care if you want to live in the country and are
| presented with a lot of paperwork.
|
| You learn the words for a day (you're able to match the
| sounds and meaning to it). You will forget a lot of them
| tomorrow, so now you have to re-learn them. This is just
| how Anki works. You keep learning and re-learning until
| they stick for a prolonged period of time. It's common
| for Japanese learners to add between 20 or 30 words to
| their learning queue.
|
| If you understand how Anki works, you will also
| understand how the word learning is used in relation to
| its flashcard mechanism.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| With all due respect, your comment doesn't add much to
| the discussion. I explicitly mentioned different
| definitions of learning, and then proceeded to give mine.
|
| And with all due respect, someone claiming they learn 20
| words per day, in Mandarin, is an almost outrageous
| claim. If you think that "learning" is commonly agreed
| upon to mean "memorize for a couple of hours", then
| please show me the research into the meaning of the word,
| that proves your claim. While I have explicitly stated,
| what _my personal_ definition is, you are claiming to be
| knowledgeable about a "commonly agreed upon" definition.
| That is an impressive claim in itself. Let us all hear
| that definition, that is so commonly agreed upon, so that
| we can gain from that.
|
| What you call learning, I call "training" or "practicing"
| or "revising". Now the onus is on you to prove to me,
| that indeed as you claim there is some commonly agreed
| upon definition, specifically in the area of learning
| Mandarin, that proves, that my definition is off.
|
| And I will have you know, that I am learning Mandarin for
| some 10+ years, and have a lot of experience in that
| area. I know what counts and what is important.
| coldblues wrote:
| I am referring to the standard metric used in SRS
| communities.
|
| When people in the language learning community say they
| "learn 20 words a day", they are referring to New Cards
| Added. It is a metric of input and initial encoding, not
| guaranteed permanent storage.
|
| In Anki, "Learning" is literally a specific phase (the
| red cards). You introduce the card, you pass the initial
| threshold, and then the algorithm handles the retention
| over the subsequent weeks. You are conflating the process
| of learning (adding new information) with the result of
| mastery (long-term active recall).
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > with all due respect, someone claiming they learn 20
| words per day, in Mandarin, is an almost outrageous claim
|
| Why do you keep harping on Mandarin in particular? Do you
| think it's harder than other languages to learn new
| words? It's not like you have to learn new hanzi for
| every word. Most are compounds. It's like being surprised
| someone easily learned how to spell "lighthouse" because
| it's got a silent "gh" and a silent "e" and the "ou" is
| not pronounced the way you'd expect, and the "th" in the
| middle isn't pronounced like "th" should be.
|
| The learner already knew how to spell "light" and "house"
| so it was effortless to learn "lighthouse."
|
| My experience with Japanese is that you hit around 800 or
| so kanji and new vocab comes very easily. Even new kanji
| come extremely easily because they're all made up of the
| same parts ("radicals").
|
| EdIT: One hour a day devoted to language study will yield
| 20 new vocab words a day that, over time, you'll have
| around 85% recall, which translates to over 6,000 new
| words per year (over 7,000 but then you adjust downward
| because of the 85% factor).
|
| The issue is that people want to learn a language in five
| minutes a day, but they don't bat an eye at playing a
| video game an hour a day to be able to beat some level. I
| remember playing for hours to be able to get good at 1942
| on the NES back in the early 90s.
| saubeidl wrote:
| I should have clarified. My goal in learning Mandarin is
| only conversational fluency, not literacy.
|
| I don't bother with the Hanzi past being able to
| recognize them. I want to be able to talk to people and,
| if I have to, use a pinyin keyboard to write basic
| sentences.
|
| So only 1 & 4 are really relevant, 2 is what Anki is
| designed to do.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| Literacy shouldn't matter for the definition of knowing a
| language anyway. Orthography isn't language. It's a
| symbolic notation that represents a language. Blind
| people don't speak a different language from non-blind
| people. Illiterate people can still speak language.
| Children still speak language. Humans in societies where
| writing systems do not exist still can speak language.
|
| Writing a language makes you more skilled at living in
| the modern world. It's not a threshold past which you
| must travel to count as a speaker of that language.
| saubeidl wrote:
| Yeah, that's pretty much my thinking also.
|
| By cutting out the memorization of Hanzi, I am able to
| accelerate my actual goal of having conversations with
| people.
|
| In Silicon Valley speak, I think the term would be _"
| ruthless prioritization" _.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > (2) Knowing how to write it, meaning the Chinese
| characters, of course.
|
| Would you say a native English speaker doesn't know the
| word "they're" if they keep spelling it "their" even if
| they use it correctly 100% of the time?
|
| How does this opinion hold up if you consider that
| spelling wasn't standardized three centuries ago. Did no
| one know any English words until spelling got
| standardized in the 1800s? Do illiterate native speakers
| not truly know any words? Do children not know words?
|
| How would your opinion change if you knew that plenty of
| native Japanese and Chinese speakers can't write the
| characters they can read anymore? If you don't have to
| physically write anymore, you lose the ability to write
| the characters. This is true of even educated adults in
| Japan and China. When I was a university student (I'm not
| Japanese), I could write kanji that my 30+yo Japanese
| friends had forgotten, but no one would say I knew how to
| use the words better than they could.
|
| EDIT: And in any case, 10 new vocabulary words per day is
| extremely easy. In my experience having studied two
| foreign languages at the university level, that's pretty
| much the bare minimum expected to get an B in class.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/supermemo-is-better-
| than-f... seems to suggest that yes, it is a major
| improvement over SM-2, and given how critical they are of
| FSRS I'm happy to believe them. SM-2 to my understanding is
| basically the simplest possible spaced repetition algorithm -
| I think something like 'double the review interval if easy,
| otherwise multiply by some difficulty factor to reduce this
| interval depending on which button was clicked'.
|
| That said, even SM-2 is probably vastly superior to just not
| doing SRS at all.
| asymmetric wrote:
| Isn't the linked article claiming that SM is superior to
| FSRS?
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| SM is claiming that the latest versions of the SM
| algorithm (namely SM-19) are vastly superior to FSRS
| (maybe it is?).
|
| They state in contrast:
|
| _We do not dismiss the work behind FSRS. It is a
| commendable open-source effort and a marked improvement
| over ancient algorithms like SM-2._
|
| For context, Anki uses SM-2's algorithm (albeit
| apparently heavily modified for various special cases) if
| FSRS is not enabled.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I think many learners are walking into a trap of thinking, if
| they just change their SPS algorithm, they will magically
| learn more. I think they might learn a little bit more, but
| the biggest effect is simply due to time investment and doing
| the repetitions. It is good to be able to practice known
| words less often, obviously, but that can be achieved using a
| very basic system already.
|
| If changing their SPS or the promises about an SPS motivate
| the learner, then great, they're putting in the work and time
| to learn, but I doubt that the effect of changing the SPS is
| as large as some people claim.
|
| For example I used a tool that supposedly uses FSPS, but it
| did have a low maximum for the duration you don't have to
| practice a word, and no way for me to "ban" a word, so that
| it asks me in 6 months or something, and simple words kept
| coming back, especially after not learning for a few days. I
| didn't make much progress using the tool, even though it had
| FSPS.
| clbrmbr wrote:
| Andrew (the CTO of AnkiHub) is smart as a whip and has built an
| impressive and seemingly sustainable business. Seems like the
| ideal steward for Anki!
| user3939382 wrote:
| Ugly over complex app for what it does. never saw the appeal
| treenode wrote:
| As a person with really poor memory, the entirety of my learning
| depends on this app. I'm worried :/
| guerrilla wrote:
| Worrying won't help. Find alternatives. Make a plan.
| trms wrote:
| When a popular, free and open source passion project led by a
| single dev moves into the hands of a company that needs to
| sustain its 30-people team [0], you know what happens next.
|
| AnkiHub's modus operandi has been to take over communities or
| projects where free exchange happens and monetize/paywall them.
| If you've been a part of the /r/medicalschoolanki subreddit, you
| know exactly what I mean. It's been hollowed out completely.
|
| In the post, AnkiHub mentions how Anki is "sacred" to them. Yet,
| they have had no qualms entrenching themselves into Anki's
| settings menu as the _only_ third-party ever to do so. [1] I am
| sure more is to come. And the language used in their post almost
| never helps their case, especially in the pricing and OSS
| sections.
|
| I understand why Damien felt he was being a bottleneck in Anki's
| development. This is similar to what was happening with Bram and
| Vim. Ultimately, the community forked and built Neovim. Gorhill
| had also similarly transferred uBlock, but then came back and
| built uBlock Origin. So the precedents are there for a successful
| community-run or leader-run spinoff.
|
| Syncing is sure to become a paid feature, and access to shared
| decks too.
|
| Creating a fork pointed to a hosted version of Sync Server [2],
| and an alternative hub where people can share decks other than
| AnkiWeb [3] is paramount. As well as saving and preserving all of
| the decks there, as they are sure to go behind a paywall.
|
| I, and I am sure many other HNers, would be willing to support
| that with our time and financially.
|
| [0] https://www.ankihub.net/about-us [1]
| https://github.com/ankitects/anki/pull/3232 [2]
| https://docs.ankiweb.net/sync-server.html [3]
| https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks
| stuxnet79 wrote:
| This is the correct take. It's over for Anki. Even assuming a
| best case scenario where the status quo remains and AnkiWeb
| continues to be "free", all the valuable data collected in
| AnkiWeb is now ripe for paywalling & potential abuse. The
| AnkiWeb privacy policy is likely to undergo a change quite soon
| - https://ankiweb.net/account/privacy
|
| A really disappointing development all around & I hope it
| galvanizes the community to fully disassociate itself from
| AnkiHub & dae.
| oaktrout wrote:
| I'm hopeful this new company wont ruin anki, but assuming
| they do, how do I find the "new anki" fork and how do I
| contribute.
|
| Is there a community / anki forum that hasn't been acquired?
| Ifkaluva wrote:
| Personally what I did is pop over to the Anki github repo
| and star it. You can also get notifications.
|
| One thing I notice is that it does seem to have a large
| group of contributors. It's hard to imagine the desktop app
| will die completely.
| apparent wrote:
| Spaced repetition seems like an ideal candidate for vibecoding.
| Sure, it gets complicated if you want all sorts of multimedia
| support, but for a lot of people, that's not necessary. How hard
| is it to build something like this, especially in 2026?
| kyorochan wrote:
| You could fit the most basic version of a spaced repetition
| program on the back of a napkin. Why would you want to vibe
| code yet another program lacking a bunch of useful features
| though?
| fragmede wrote:
| Why would you want to install someone else's bloated mess
| that includes a ton of crap you'll never use?
| kyorochan wrote:
| Tell me about your custom browser you're reading HN on!
| fragmede wrote:
| I'd love to!
|
| So I used AI to help me write this, I gotta be honest,
| but I have this TUI I use over SSH to access HN. I call
| it Nitpick!
|
| It's GPL, athttps://github.com/fragmede/nitpick
|
| It uses the HN API and algolia and golang with the bubble
| tea libraries. I'm parsing/scraping the threads page
| though, because reconstructing that from the API was
| proving to be a hassle.
|
| It even supports logging in and commenting and reply
| notification!
|
| I'm not totally sure where I land on using libraries
| (bubble tea) as they do bloat the program with
| unnecessary features, but I do like its simple text
| interface over using a web browser and a whole javascript
| engine for just rendering text.
|
| Anyway, patches welcome!
|
| :)
| apparent wrote:
| Probably because I've seen so many people complaining about
| the issues with so many of the common apps. I don't want to
| pay a subscription for SR, and I don't really understand what
| the useful features are that I'd be missing out on. Can
| someone clue me in?
| ThouYS wrote:
| Anki is and was truly a blessing. Not sure I would have gotten
| through my studies without it. Thank you dae!
| calpaterson wrote:
| Longtime anki user here. I think the thing people never
| appreciate with flashcards is that deck maintenance is real work.
| And in many cases, it's not work that you can do yourself as a
| learner of the material: the deck really needs to be created by
| someone who knows the material.
|
| Commercial decks, where the deck maintainer is paid for his
| efforts, make a lot of sense.
|
| And I suppose if they are making money out of the ecosystem, it
| also only makes sense that commercial deck makers make a
| contribution to the technology that makes it possible. I suppose
| I would prefer that be a contribution rather than ownership and
| custody, but I suppose Anki's license terms (it is AGPL3+ - I
| think without a CLA) prevents them closing it.
|
| So cautiously optimistic
| motbus3 wrote:
| No one is appreciating cheap working solution from good folks
| and prefer to accept the free spy-me stuff going around.
|
| I see lots of people also moving stuff with AI that will
| clearly be biased and force products down your throat. This
| might be the end of the internet as we know, but the next
| thing, although sometimes looks exciting, will be controlled by
| faceless greedy monsters.
|
| I guess the fact that we all didn't prioritise those small
| businesses is getting somewhere
| nickkell wrote:
| Is it really beneficial to use a deck created by someone else?
| I thought part of the learning process is really engaging with
| the cards - by writing them, thinking about them, and making
| mental associations with things you already know.
| lkos wrote:
| I would also like to second that. For me, making Anki cards
| was 50% of the learning.
| pbmonster wrote:
| Just as an example: I learn languages using Anki, and I
| always do it the same way: I use decks that
|
| * exclusively quiz entire sentences
|
| * introduce around 500 new words (a nice mix of nouns, verbs
| and adjectives)
|
| * use a wide variety of grammatical constructs (including all
| conjugations of the new verbs),
|
| * and that have audio of a native speaker reading the entire
| sentence after I "flip" the card
|
| Such a deck needs to be thoroughly designed, and while I
| could choose the new words and then write software to make
| sure they are all used equally in sentences and no
| conjugations are missing, I actually can't easily make sure
| they are correct and I can't record the audio of the text.
| calpaterson wrote:
| "I thought part of the learning process is really engaging
| with the cards"
|
| I would substitute "the material" for "the cards" in this
| sentence. Making the cards yourself is one way to do that,
| but it's not always the most time effective - imagine the
| extra work put onto a medical student having to make the
| cards for every subject they need to cover. That is what
| ankihub does and it seems to be very popular
|
| But yeah: downloading the median deck off of ankiweb: very
| sub-optimal
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Yes. Absolutely. The biggest data point pushing the
| affirmative is less Anki itself but the success of products
| at the forefront of the second wave of spaced repetition apps
| [1] like Khan Academy. Duolingo, too, but Duolingo gets flak
| from people for being too Goodhearted by retention for its
| own good; Khan Academy actually does force feed you enough
| actual problems to learn some math.
|
| Writing the cards is engaging with the cards for some small
| subset of the population. I am part of that audience. But
| most people are terrible at it, and it's not an easy skill to
| build.
|
| Ther majority of people who are interested in Anki -- and the
| _vast_ majority of normal human beings with nonzero
| willingness to pay, which is a very unique subset of the
| population with goals that tend to look like "Pass X exam by
| Y date so I can [get a job|earn my citizenship in a better
| country|...] -- just want good pedagogical material wrapped
| in some control harness so they can treat some fraction of
| their learning the same way they treat going to the gym. Show
| up, put in the reps, get results.
|
| [1]: https://til.andrew-quinn.me/posts/the-second-wave-of-
| spaced-...
| drakonka wrote:
| I've found the opposite when using Anki myself. The process of
| developing the deck is a critical part of learning the material
| for me. I consume my target language, see something I don't
| understand, figure out what it means, then put it into the deck
| - and _then_ practice it. To cut out the whole first part of
| that chain by using a premade deck eradicates much of the
| learning process for me (I've tried).
| calpaterson wrote:
| Works well in some cases (eg some language learning patterns
| - but not all) but not in others. And even when you "create
| your own cards" you're usually using resources from elsewhere
| - eg native speaker audio on language cards.
|
| A significant number of anki users (eg: medicine, law -
| others) are working with pre-made decks and if you look at
| anki's competition - all of them offer pre-made decks as a
| key part of it. Medics have always used flashcards (many
| university bookshops sell physical flashcards for medics) and
| I don't each medical student would benefit from producing,
| eg, their own anatomy flashcards.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| The best thing that can happen is a fork. There is no way this
| will make the app worse, at least if you use a phone to do the
| reviewing. Syncing is sure to become a subscription.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| I still haven't quite understood how Anki can apparently be
| profitable when the web sync with Ankiweb apparently supports
| an unlimited amount of data (surely some people heavily abuse
| this - but one never hears about fair use being applied?). Even
| legit and honest use can mean massive collection sizes since
| you can have any rich media in an Anki collection.
| stuxnet79 wrote:
| A few things. Up until now Anki was not a business and was
| not meant to be profitable.
|
| AnkiWeb also does not support an unlimited amount of data.
| It's evident that their storage requirements aren't infinite.
| They aggressively cull content. Not syncing for 6 months
| results in automatic deletion last I checked.
| colin_jack wrote:
| I've started using LLMs to help with card creation, and reviewing
| historic cards. Its been increasingly successful, I still end up
| with cards tailored to me, and the card quality has gone up (as
| I've asked the LLM to look for other views/sources and to do
| associate research to produce high quality cards).
|
| Having ability to bake some of that into the tool in a
| configurable way would be ideal, and I hope thats sort of path
| they go down.
|
| I realise in meantime plugins are an option, but I've found the
| quality of plugins very mixed.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| I learned about Anki recently, and as I was told, this is somehow
| a standard on medical studies, where a whole bunch of knowledge
| must be memorised
| krintfu wrote:
| Ankihub is bunk. Why don't they let us play Darbot games here?
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I have had a bad experience with Anki so far. Maybe someone can
| chime in, clearing things up for me:
|
| When I search for HSK vocabulary Anki decks or whatever they call
| it, I found almost exclusively sets of words that are the wrong
| way around. They showed me the Chinese characters and asked me
| what the English translation is. I was incredulous about how many
| wrong decks there are and that I could not find good decks. I was
| starting to wonder, if people are actually just using Anki to
| learn to read Chinese characters, one-way learning basically,
| only recognition not writing. Only for reading subtitles and
| such, instead of writing with friends. Or perhaps they have the
| illusion, that they are able to write, because they can type in
| the Pinyin, and will get a selection of characters, which they
| then can recognize. But I, I want to be able to properly write
| the characters myself. The crucial issue was, that I did not find
| a simple setting to invert the direction of translation of a
| deck. How can such a simple thing not be among the most easy to
| find actions to perform with a deck? I read something about it
| not being possible on mobile phone, but somehow being possible on
| computer, but not as simple as flipping a switch.
|
| Ultimately, I abandoned Anki and recently proceeded made my own
| tool for learning the characters, that is highly configurable and
| that can change the direction with the change of one config
| attribute.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| Could you share your tool please?
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I could, but as you can see in this thread in sibling
| comments, even stating that I couldn't find a way to invert
| the direction easily already attracts ire of Anki
| evangelists, who assume bad intentions and try to dismiss
| personal experiences of others. Anki must be perfect! If you
| want to take a look, you can check out my recent comments, or
| my git repos.
| david_allison wrote:
| > They showed me the Chinese characters and asked me what the
| English translation is. I was incredulous about how many wrong
| decks there are and that I could not find good decks.
|
| You can edit the structure of the card templates so they're the
| 'right way around' for you:
|
| https://docs.ankiweb.net/getting-started.html#card-types
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Is this available on the mobile app? A template editor?
|
| My issue is, that I also don't know where to find the
| functionality for editing the template. I also cannot find it
| under deck "Options" in the desktop app. There is sooo much
| in the UI, that I think it is possible, that I am simply
| overlooking it somewhere. The docs you linked don't tell me
| where to find that. No screenshots of any UI are visible.
| Even now, after you telling the I need to edit templates, I
| still cannot find the functionality in the UI. I simply don't
| see it.
|
| My feedback at this point would be to make this something,
| that is easily discoverable for the user, or add screenshots
| of how to get there to the docs and have keywords in the
| docs, that will ensure, that when I search for how to invert
| a deck, I will most likely find that page of the docs.
| david_allison wrote:
| It's available on AnkiDroid: Main menu -> Manage note
| types.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| And on desktop? When i go to: Menu bar
| -> "Tools" -> "Manage Note Types" -> select a deck ->
| "Options" (in the side bar)
|
| I only see some latex code for header and footer:
| \documentclass[12pt]{article}
| \special{papersize=3in,5in}
| \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
| \usepackage{amssymb,amsmath} \pagestyle{empty}
| \setlength{\parindent}{0in} \begin{document}
|
| I assume those are header and footer of a card when it is
| displayed? But this does not include translation
| direction.
|
| And why is it called "Note Type"? How does this concept
| relate to "Cards" or "Templates"?
|
| Can you see, why one would have problems finding the
| correct setting?
|
| EDIT: Now I found it under: Menu bar ->
| "Tools" -> "Manage Note Types" -> select a deck ->
| "Cards" (in the side bar)
|
| There I would actually expect some list of the cards, not
| a template editing. It seems rather unintuitive to me.
| The issues are:
|
| (1) The user has to know where to find that.
|
| (2) The user has to know, that there is no short way to
| get to editing the attributes of the word shown, but
| instead, that they need to edit a template.
|
| (3) The user has to know, where they will find the
| function to edit a template. I claim a normal user will
| not suspect this option to be hidden under "Note Types".
| What even is a note? Starting to use Anki, I would look
| for words like "Card", "Flashcard", "Translation",
| "Direction", "reverse", "training options", etc., but not
| "Note Types". It is a weird naming.
|
| (4) A user will have to discover, that they are not
| supposed to click "Options", but "Cards". But that this
| brings up the card options, and that that contains the
| template, instead of the templates being something
| entirely separate, loosely coupled.
|
| It is hard to include so much functionality in one tool.
| I understand that. But personally, I would have had to
| wade through every single menu item, to find this
| functionality, and this also explains, why in the past I
| have not been able to find this at all.
| pushedx wrote:
| On mobile you can edit the front and back template.
|
| Anki is a platform, not a content creator. I would be thankful
| that someome shared their hard work of creating a deck that has
| all of the content to meet your needs.
|
| For what it's worth, there are many "RTK" decks for Japanese
| that show english keyword on front and expect you to write the
| kanji before flipping.
|
| Maybe search for an "RTH" deck to go along with the book
| Remembering the Hanzi.
|
| Anki is an extremely powerful and feature rich software, and it
| seems that you barely scratched the surface before dismissing
| it.
|
| Edit: it took me 10 seconds to find this deck
| https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1489829777 there's probably a
| Simplified one as well. Good luck with your studies.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| What does RTH stand for? I am guessing "something something
| To Kanji/Hanzi".
|
| The deck you linked is not mentioning HSK in the description
| though. It was maybe 1 year ago or so, that I searched for
| HSK1-3 level decks and only got wrong direction ones.
|
| I am searching again now:
|
| (1) "HSK1 English" -- nothing
|
| (2) "HSK1" -- lots of results, but also tons of results that
| are not relevant for me, because they are not for English. --
| Results like https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1474834583 --
| but that is 1-4 which is too much for me. I either need the
| 1, 2, 3 levels separate, or 1-3 in one deck. Also finding
| https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/166845167, which is the wrong
| way around. Starts right away by asking me "De " instead of
| something like "(some description here)". When I go to deck
| options in Anki desktop app, I see "Display Order", but there
| I cannot select any "English -> Chinese". Tons of options,
| but none that inverts what the cards show.
|
| One sibling comment informs me, that I have to edit a
| template somewhere. But I don't know where, and in the deck
| options I don't quickly see any template editing function.
|
| And this has been my experience with pretty much every HSK
| deck I found there. It would seem silly, that everyone
| uploads decks in the "wrong" order. Which leads me to think,
| that many people cheat themselves, by only doing the
| recognition part of learning the characters. Why else would
| so many people upload decks, only so that whoever who
| downloads the deck has to invert them first, before using
| them. I also think that many learners are probably not aware
| of the issue with seeing the character first and then
| translating to English, in comparison with doing it the other
| way around.
|
| So now lets do your "RTH" search:
|
| "HSK1 RTH" -- " Error: Please log in to perform more
| searches."
|
| I am sorry, I cannot even do a keyword search a couple of
| times??? I need to log in, requiring an account (!) to even
| find a suitable deck?! OK, at this point I give up again.
| bigbluesax wrote:
| >Ultimately, I abandoned Anki and recently proceeded made my
| own tool for learning the characters, that is highly
| configurable and that can change the direction with the change
| of one config attribute.
|
| You built an entire flashcard app by yourself, but you couldn't
| figure out how to edit card templates in anki?
|
| Ah who am I kidding, your probably just trying to advertise
| your app.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I have fun developing useful software catering exactly to my
| individual needs, learning a GUI framework/toolkit on the
| side. I don't have fun needing to figure out the abstract
| concepts of someone else's tool, and needing to search a lot,
| to find a way to do something that should be very simple and
| very prominent in the interface, as it seems to be necessary
| for most decks I can find, in order to properly learn the
| characters including writing them.
|
| I have not much to gain from advertising my app. It is AGPL
| and I don't plan on ever selling it. If it is useful to other
| people, that's great. If not, then it will at least be very
| useful to myself. I don't see what's wrong with mentioning,
| that I build my own, especially since this is HN. We are not
| on TikTok here.
| billynomates wrote:
| You can do that easily with Anki as others have mentioned,
| however it is generally recommended to create your own cards
| since the process of researching, phrasing, and formatting the
| content serves as the crucial first stage of cognitive
| encoding. By actively deciding how to simplify a concept or
| which image best represents a term, you are building unique
| neural "hooks" that link new information to your existing
| knowledge. This personal investment transforms the card from a
| dry piece of data into a meaningful memory, making it far more
| resistant to forgetting than a generic card designed by a
| stranger.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| That's basically what I do with my own tool. I create my own
| data files and store lots of meta information like similar
| words, usage, and mnemonics in there. I try to keep that
| somewhat usable for others, but ultimately, I am building the
| tool for myself and also write the data about words in the
| way I personally find it useful, so it will be biased in that
| way. Only, that I am also building the software to use the
| data around it, combining 2 hobbies, computer programming and
| learning Mandarin.
| mofeien wrote:
| Regarding the "wrong direction" issue: In my experience it
| could also have just been the case that both directions had
| card templates, but due to some sorting order of new cards
| setting all Chinese->English cards would appear before any
| English->Chinese.
|
| If that is the case, it could be corrected in the deck options.
| And if the English->Chinese cards are missing altogether they
| can be created from the note by adding a new card template to
| the note.
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| >Will Anki remain open source?
|
| >Absolutely. Anki's core code will remain open source, guided by
| the same principles that have guided the project from the
| beginning.
|
| >Anki's core code will remain open source
|
| Hmmmmmm. Could be benign, but... hmmmmmm...
| lovestory wrote:
| Considering that anki can always be forked if development goes
| being hostile towards users I think this is a net positive. The
| most common complaint among new users is the learning curve and
| the UI. Both can be solved and Anki can flourish to the bigger
| level. I say this as someone who does 300+ cards every day.
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| Looks like it's already going in the wrong direction.
|
| "Our agreement with Damien stipulates that the current AGPLv3
| code remains open source"
|
| It sounds like a very specific dementi.
| digiown wrote:
| There's no CLA on Anki. Even dae does not have the right to
| relicense it.
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| They still have the closed source AnkiWeb Backend to do some
| annoying fuckery
| blayme wrote:
| The way AnkiHub answers the questions in the FAQ in that non-
| answer corporate way sure gives me bad vibes.
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| People usually say they want to change the world, then there are
| people that just change the world. Thank you for Anki (heart)
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Always a bit scary when an open source project changes
| stewardship like this, but I'm quite relieved to see all involved
| parties seem to be aware of the dangers and very much on the same
| page about not screwing this up.
|
| Done right, commercial interests can often have a very positive
| symbiotic relationship with open source. Almost all the largest
| and best open source projects out there have substantial
| involvement from commercial interests.
|
| I do think though that from a structural/governance perspective
| it's not a good idea for Anki to be _owned_ by AnkiHub. Anki is a
| community project, not a corporate product, and while it sounds
| like the license will continue to reflect that, I personally
| think it would be best if the corporate structure did too. If
| Anki were spun out as an independent foundation (like Blender,
| Linux, etc) receiving most of its support and development work
| from AnkiHub, rather than owned outright, I think that would
| allow a much more robust governance structure than just having
| everything be under AnkiHub 's direct control with some pinky
| promises about listening to the community.
| guluarte wrote:
| One of the apps that should be worth billions of dollars and the
| founder billionaire
| david_allison wrote:
| That's not the way the world works. I'm not in it for the
| money.
|
| In the past 12 months, I've made PS65.79 from GitHub Sponsors
| (no fees, thank you GitHub/Microsoft) and $87.89 from Patreon
| (pre-fees, I'll probably see ~$50), and a split of the Open
| Collective [below]
|
| AnkiDroid GitHub Sponsors:
| https://github.com/sponsors/ankidroid
|
| and finances/sponsorship: https://opencollective.com/ankidroid
| (with immense help from dae).
| jsLavaGoat wrote:
| I have peer-reviewed research on the efficacy of SRS in second-
| language acquisition and this should be everywhere for everyone
| and the fact that it isn't is both a scandal and an opportunity
| for learners who do use it to leverage that advantage.
|
| I use it extensively in my teaching. The problem is deploying
| Anki on locked down networks can be difficult so I've built
| alternatives and hacks to let you deploy decks and school
| accounts, but making a full-featured web client would change all
| of this.
|
| So maybe it's a good time for me to have also started one of my
| own that I'm temporarily calling libreSRS because I'm not sure of
| the new direction here.
|
| The goal is to have a multi-user, multi-algorithm-capable, web-
| based system that exposes everything (especially uploading!!) to
| the web client.
| eduFreedom wrote:
| I shared my thoughts as a veteran user and contributor to Anki,
| as well as a former AnkiHub team member
| https://youtu.be/13p0t8Tv-jw
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