Well, there's org-mode plugins for vim and vscode, github displays it just fine, pandoc processes it, there's a syntax specification at https://orgmode.org/worg

Well, there's org-mode plugins for vim and vscode, github displays it just fine, pandoc processes it, there's a syntax specification at https://orgmode.org/worg/dev/org-syntax-edited.html https://orgmode.org/worg/dev/org-syntax-edited.html, a separate clojure implementation at https://github.com/200ok-ch/org-parser https://github.com/200ok-ch/org-parser using EBNF, several Android and iOS apps. And Emacs has been around long enough that it's likely to keep being around for at least as long (see Lindy Effect). Org is hardly more tied up to the editor than any of the many other formats people use – all of these have more or less complete editor support depending on what features you need (e.g. if you start doing fancy literate programming in markdown, or azathoth forbid, try commenting out lines, you'll find spotty support in at least some of the existing implementations). And if you like the full combination of features that Emacs+Org gives you, you'll be hard pressed to find another environment to replace that, so ... why bother? (OTOH if you only need some minor part, like html export, and you have to work with people already using other formats, then those other formats might be better.)