I like the idea of something like Notion but I have no idea how I would preserve my data or ever migrate it. I imagine you have to have some pretty complex stuff going on to have rich text, images, databases, macros and whatever else all in a file or notebook. Getting it out in some sort of format may not be too hard, but how would you ever migrate that to new software?
Am I over thinking this?
I know Obsidian stores everything in plaintext, but how would something like Notion or Affine (a self-hosted one) compare.
As someone who used Notion and thinks about long term accessibility and vendor lock in: the ability to migrate is an important factor but not the only and most important factor. Notion is really, very good, very easy to get started with basic functionality and implement more sophisticated systems as the need evolves. And that is one reason why it’s popular.
I moved away from using it it to another proprietary subscription platform years ago when I changed jobs and started working on new projects. I still occasionally log back in and look up things, but not often because those projects are complete and closed. If Notion becomes unavailable one day, I have everything exported, saved on my computer, and backed up. It would be inconvenient to use those exports, but I didn’t have to so far, and probably never will.
Obsidian or logseq may be very powerful, and would certainly work for my personal notetaking. But for work, I want to avoid spending more time than necessary on configuring things and training people in using it, I need something that is easy to use correctly and securely for anyone. We regularly export and save everything. Migration would be a huge pain, but it wouldn’t be an unsolvable problem, it would just take time. I wouldn’t want to preemptively spend time when the platform may actually outlast the project.