Logseq was captured by VC a long time ago. They switched from open files to a database, their synching product is closed source (not selfhostable), and they have built-in telemetry.

Obsidian is at least storing in markdown. Although some plugins probably add additional formatting that isn't standard.

My use case isn't likely to be a personal knowledge base, I've just never had any traction on that sort of thing beyond a blog/microblog. I'm wanting to use something specifically for organizing the building of a shop/ADU: todo lists, pinterest-like inspiration boards, costing spreadsheets...

https://anytype.io/ is the open-source CC of Notion AFAIK.

You don't lose anything from the proprietary nature of Obsidian because it's just markdown files all the way down.

For the sake of staying a computer nerd I decided to put all my notes in a private GitHub repo with help of a local 5b Gemma4 LLM. Is working extremely well. It doesn't matter in what format i type. I Use opencode for entering new notes.

Logseq isn't abandonware - they're in the process of rebuilding the app from the ground up to be database-driven, rather than house-brand Markdown as the source of truth and a database constructed from the files afterwards.

I'm not saying it's the most likely project to survive, but they've been working in quiet mode for a good while now.