Well put. A lot of these feel like the wrong tool for the job, and I have a really hard time understanding why you'd want to track pitch data in a format like this when, as you say, DAWs exist and midi tracks can be moved around between them.
The only time these types of projects make more sense to me is when they present opportunities for discoverability or non-linear sequencing that can result in new or interesting ideas. For example, the Orca Sequencer used in this demo vide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe8wE0sx31Q) is an example of a tool that folks use as a synth-agnostic sequencer that takes advantage of a non-linear format to create music that you might not in a DAW/piano roll. Or at the very least, makes you take a wholly different route to get there.
Projects like Alda, however, make less sense to me since they are squarely pointed at linear-workflow music tracking, which is such a saturated space that it's hard to come in with a new format that doesn't just feel like a more painful way to do what a DAW can let you do.