MIDI was enthusiastically supported by Yamaha and Roland, two of the biggest synth players of that era.

So I imagine, for it to become widely successful, that this new standard would need the wholehearted support of at least 2 of Steinberg, Apple, Ableton, and Avid.

Maybe I’m misinterpreting the readme but other DAWs would not need to cooperate if you’re developing a tool to transpile between formats. I think most of the proprietary specs could be reverse engineered.

Well, you have to start somewhere.