The Exit Nobody Saw Coming

Anki, the flashcard app that's helped millions of people memorize everything from medical school anatomy to Japanese kanji, just changed hands. The founder, Damien Elmes (known as "dae" to the community), transferred ownership to AnkiHub—a company that's been selling Anki decks and add-ons to medical students. But here's the twist: Damien isn't leaving. He's staying on, just at "a more sustainable level."

This is what happens when burnout becomes a business risk.

The One-Person Bottleneck Problem

For over 15 years, Damien ran Anki as a solo operation. He maintained the desktop app, the iOS app (which he charged $25 for to fund development), AnkiWeb's sync infrastructure, and somehow kept the whole thing AGPL-licensed and free for most users. The community loved it. Medical students built their entire study systems around it. Language learners swore by it.

But here's the thing about one-person projects: they're incredibly fragile. Not because the person is incompetent—Anki is legitimately well-architected with a Rust core that powers all the clients—but because humans burn out. They get tired. They want to work on other things. They have lives.

From the Hacker News discussion, you can see the community picked up on this. One commenter nailed it: "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."

The Unconventional Exit Structure

Most acquisition stories go one of two ways: the founder cashes out completely and the new owners gut the product, or the founder stays on for a "golden handcuffs" period and then leaves. This is neither.

AnkiHub is bringing Damien on, but also hiring David Allison—the lead maintainer of AnkiDroid, the excellent open-source Android client. They're explicitly saying they need to "figure out governance" rather than showing up with a five-year plan. They're promising no VC money, no investors, just a 35-person company that needs to sustain itself.

The community is rightfully skeptical. The FAQ already has weasel words: "Anki's core code will remain open source." What's not core? And AnkiHub's business model is literally selling decks and add-ons—features that could theoretically be built into Anki itself.

What Founders Can Learn

Burnout isn't just personal—it's an existential business risk. If you're the sole maintainer of something thousands (or millions) of people depend on, you're not being noble by grinding yourself into dust. You're creating a time bomb.

Open source doesn't mean you can't get paid. Damien funded Anki through the iOS app. It worked, but barely. The AGPL license means anyone can fork it, which is both a safety net (if AnkiHub screws up, someone can fork) and a constraint (hard to add proprietary features).

Succession is hard, especially in community-driven projects. You can't just sell to whoever waves the biggest check. The new owners need to understand what makes the community tick. AnkiHub at least uses Anki themselves and has been part of the ecosystem. That's something.

Define "core" before you promise it stays open. The vagueness in their commitment to keeping Anki open source is already causing concern. If they'd been specific—"the scheduling algorithm, card rendering, and sync protocol will always be AGPL"—they'd have bought more trust.

The Part Nobody's Saying Out Loud

AnkiHub has 35 employees. They need revenue. Their current business is selling medical school decks and add-ons. Anki's infrastructure—especially AnkiWeb, which syncs everyone's decks for free—costs money to run.

Something's going to have to give. Either syncing becomes paid (there's already a self-hostable sync server, so savvy users can escape), or deck sharing gets paywalled, or "premium features" start appearing that aren't in the open-source core.

The good news? Anki is forkable. Multiple people in the HN thread mentioned Neovim (forked from Vim) and uBlock Origin (forked from uBlock) as templates. If AnkiHub enshittifies it, someone will fork.

The bad news? Forking is expensive. You need infrastructure, maintainers, and community momentum. Most forks die quietly.

The Real Test

We'll know in 12-18 months whether this worked. If Damien looks less burned out, if David ships improvements to AnkiDroid, if the community still feels heard—maybe this was the right move. If syncing suddenly costs $5/month and the subreddit is full of "AnkiHub ruined everything" posts, well, we'll know that too.

For now, it's a fascinating case study in what happens when a beloved solo project hits the limits of one person's capacity. The alternative to this deal wasn't Anki staying free forever. It was Damien walking away and leaving everyone in the lurch.

At least this way, someone's trying to keep the lights on.