the risk of shooting RAW?

[Chris R]

I think it's safe to say that in 50 years all digital formats and medium used today will be long obsoleted so why worry? If you care about keeping your photographs for 50+ years you should forget about digital and invest in high quality archival prints. Get several copies made and store them far away from each other. Chances are they'll last longer than any digital copy ever will.

 

[Vtec44]

Netscape ceased to exist, yet the open source project is still around powering the next generation of web browsers. I'd suspect the same for any proprietary RAW file format.

 

[BuS_RiDeR]

since every camera maker have their own proprietary raw format, NEF being Nikon's. What if in 50 years, nikon goes bankrupt, and no software maker would cater for NEF files, that means all the images saved in NEF will becomes useless unless converted?

VERY unlikely. Plus... There will likely always be software and CODEC makers to solve any future issues between formats...

Unless we blow ourselves up. Which seems more likely to me...

 

[KmH]

since every camera maker have their own proprietary raw format, NEF being Nikon's. What if in 50 years, nikon goes bankrupt, and no software maker would cater for NEF files, that means all the images saved in NEF will becomes useless unless converted?

Your logic here is fatally flawed.
NEF files I have now, or that I make in the next 50 years, would not suddenly become unreadable because Nikon goes out of business.

Plus, a company like Nikon gets bought by some other company, so Nikon doesn't just up and disappear, it just gets a new name.