Yes, the org file format is only really powerful when combined with the Emacs extension. That said, for people who already DO use the Emacs extension, it's fant

Yes, the org file format is only really powerful when combined with the Emacs extension. That said, for people who already DO use the Emacs extension, it's fantastically more convenient to use as a document markup format than anything else, since you can add tags, TODO items, scheduled dates, etc, and it will all integrate with your existing calendaring/reminders/project planning/whatever. Obviously those people (like me) would prefer if they could use their precious file format everywhere. So no, org-the-file-format doesn't really offer anything to anyone that isn't an org-the-emacs-extension user, but on the other hand it is pretty much feature-equivalent to Markdown/ReStructuredText/etc for most things. Therefore, other than the (significant) switching friction, it would seem to make sense to make more tools speak org-the-file-format in at least a rudimentary way: non-org-the-emacs-extension users don't really lose anything, and org-the-emacs-extension users will gain quite a bit. Github allows a README.org file to be the project front page now, and it's great. It doesn't deal with ALL the features of org, but I can pretty much treat it as an ordinary org file with tasks, and subtasks, and so on, and still have it look relatively nice for someone looking at the repo in a browser. That's all the VScode thing is trying to do: make org-the-file-format a little bit less painful to use outside Emacs. It's not trying to ape all the features of org-the-emacs-extension, which would be madness.