Exactly. Not a huge fan of notes apps storing the data in a db.otherwise there is a lot to like about joplin. With obsidian i open my notes in codium all the time to make mass edits or fill gaps that obsidians UI cant meet, which is not possible with joplin.

Fortunately with obsidian as long as you keep the plugins on the lighter side and keep any non-markdown content in seperate files via linking, im not too worried about having to jump ship if it ever goes bad. Worst case if a plugin dies or i have to migrate, the actual loss of data is that some plugin used json or whatever and it'd have to be converted or replaced.

I do have hope at least that if the company folds they'll open source it, or turn a blind eye to a community reengineering effort. And what is unique about obsidian markdown and metadata will probably get community-built migration tools quickly if enough people jump ship en masse.

But for the time being Obsidian is the best option for me and i dont feel that bad about it.

I used Joplin for up to 8 hours daily for half a year (university) before switching to Obsidian, too. As far as I know, Joplin lets you store the notes as files, too, but you need to set it up that way from the start.

Still, I found Obsidian to be much more pleasant and - ironically - easier to modify (by writing plugins) than Joplin.

IMO Obsidian is already a little rogue, in the sense that it only supports their sync. I know you can glue something together by syncing the folder itself, but that's not convenient or the point. For now I'll stick with Joplin because it works with nextcloud nicely.