Outline
| License | FOSS problems | Maintenance | SSO | Users | Tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BSL 1.1Source available license. Source available under restricted terms until a conversion date, after which it becomes open source. Each project sets its own restrictions. | Open Washing | Active | ✅ | Unlimited | ✅ |
Description
Outline is a collaborative knowledge base with a Notion-like editing experience — nested documents, real-time editing, comments, and a clean interface. Login is via magic links sent by email, or via OAuth providers (Google, Slack, OIDC).
Features
- Real-time collaborative editing — genuinely simultaneous, not just multiple people able to edit at different times.
- Full-text search — well-designed, lowering the barrier for non-technical contributors.
- Magic-link and OAuth login — email, Google, Slack, or OIDC, not just a password form.
Usage patterns
- Active team collaboration — real-time editing makes it a better fit than static tools like BookStack for content that gets worked on together, not just written once and referenced.
- Some features locked in self-hosted mode — structured data and some security features aren't available outside the hosted version, despite the self-hosted version otherwise being surprisingly complete.
License and governance
BSL — Business Source License, not an OSI-approved open source license. Outline uses it to prevent competitors from hosting their product, which also means this isn't free software in any meaningful sense, even though most of the self-hosted feature set works.
Conclusion
Why you would — clean, fast, and pleasant to use, with real-time collaborative editing and a well-designed search that lowers the barrier for non-technical contributors — and despite the license, the self-hosted version is surprisingly complete.
Why you wouldn't — BSL means this isn't free software in any meaningful sense, regardless of how complete the self-hosted feature set is. Structured data and some security features stay locked out of the self-hosted version specifically. See Setup for the actual deploy steps, including Authentik SSO.