Anki Partnership Announcement →
Huge announcement for my single favorite piece of open source software Anki. It's the flash card app that I used extensively while learning Japanese. The original developer, Damien, is changing the business model and partnering with AnkiHub which sells 3rd party Anki plugins and flash cards.
Right now the only monitization of the entire Anki project is the iOS app priced at $25, Apple taking $7. I was suprised to see that Anki is #3 currently on the entire iPhone for Paid Apps. It's easy to make fun of the state of mobile paid apps, but certaintly it's remarkably successful there. The website and Qt python cross platform desktop app are free. Not to mention server costs, free flash card hosting for any users (with images my database is over 5 gigs), etc. According to the post, it sounds like the biggest driver for this is to de-esclate the pressure of running everything from Damien (otsukare!), and expanding contributions to Anki. They also specifically called out UI improvements as a goal with more resources.
Anki's Browse Tab, showing my Japanese flashcards.
Sure, I wouldn't call this screen exactly following modern best UI design practices. As a tenured Anki user though I have hundreds of hours of muscle memory in this screen, so on first read I was very nervous about design changes. I knew AnkiHub as the med school Anki people, where am I in the language learning community. I'm worried if our more hacker DIY vibes in language learning are going to be left behind. At the same time, I'm starting to come around to welcoming change.
Last month, I walked a friend of mine learning English on how to use Anki, and it took me over an hour to go through all of the different tools and addons that I use to set the whole system up. She seemed really happy with it in the end, but I left that experience reminded my first time with Anki and how many different guides I had to comb through to settle into learning. Maybe there's some way to better integrate the wealth of 3rd part addons into a more seamless experience. As a developer, I wrote HTML to style my flash cards, scripts to automate new flash cards, and created PRs to improve the addons I was use. It was dare I say perfect for me, but I also want regular users have that feeling of freedom too. Anki is so great because you have so much power to control your own learning.
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.
Time will tell!