> We invest so much time in it, and we need to know that it's not going to be taken away from us

Agreed, but in the case of Obsidian, since the way they manage the data, they cannot just "take it away from us", it'll always sit where you leave it, as it's not a SaaS or a remote service. And even if the desktop client went away, all your data and notes are still available.

Otherwise I generally agree with you, all my professional and personal tooling shouldn't be able to take away agency from me, but it's worth separate the tooling from the data, as loosing the tooling sucks but loosing the data is a lot worse, at least they cannot do that.