[randomchars]

You could, but why? I wrote a small package to automate my backups, and transform the content into something readable for myself. It's far from feature complete, even for my simple personal use.

But if you're doing a complete read-only copy of roam, why not go all the way and make it editable, and compete with them instead?

[Grustaf]

If, like OP, you are concerned about the closed nature of Roam, you could make that converter instead of a replacement for Roam.

You could say openness is “a feature, not a product”, and it’s a feature that could be retrofitted.

[randomchars]

You could, yeah.

You could put in a lot of work, just for read-only feature parity.

Or you could work some more, and have a competing product.

You seem adamant, that the former is a better path, but I don't quite see why would you do all that work for naught.

(Roam already broke my backup script 2 times, and there are better uses of my time than interfacing with a proprietary product, if there are better alternatives.)

[Grustaf]

I'd say a parser is an order of magnitude less work, but if someone wants to make a full product I'm not going to try to stop them.