Fairly easily transferrable to something else. I assume that many of the plugins that power users use involve added non-standard stuff to the files. Like if you're adding a bunch of metadata to be consumed by the Dataview plugin, all that metadata might be worthless on a new app unless someone creates an equivalent plugin elsewhere.
It's open source, so they can. But people who want forward-compatibility should probably think about what their raw markdown files look like, and how useful they'd be in another program.
Personally I do avoid add-ons that create special syntax in the md files so that if Obsidian ever goes shitty I’ll have an easier time migrating to whatever alternative.
If it ever comes to needing an Obsidian replacement I'd hope it can aim for compatibility with the plug-in ecosystem, at least initially. No idea how difficult a target that would be. Either way, I certainly worry about my data in Obsidian less than I worry about Evernote, OneNote, or Apple Notes, even with a couple of non-standard markdown additions.
Since it's not VC backed I'm hopeful about Obsidian building a long-term sustainable business without having to turn shitty, but who knows. I should sign up for Sync and give them some money.
> I assume that many of the plugins that power users use involve added non-standard stuff to the files. Like if you're adding a bunch of metadata to be consumed by the Dataview plugin, all that metadata might be worthless on a new app ...
The metadata is YAML frontmatter. Works with any frontmatter aware tools, which includes, for example, most static site generators.
It's all just markdown, the plugins layer on top of Markdown.
Your site basically works if you shove it in GitHub pages. With a touch of config matching, you can open an Obsidian "vault" in the VSCode plugin called Foam (like Roam but for a local folder structure of Markdown files).
Most add ons, like, say, Excalidraw for charting, are themselves tools with plugins in GitHub Pages, Hugo, MkDocs, etc., so are portable for static site gen (SSG).
The only thing it seems to be "missing" is the CRDT style multiplayer live editing of tools like Notion or Craft.
It's open source, so they can. But people who want forward-compatibility should probably think about what their raw markdown files look like, and how useful they'd be in another program.