This should indeed be considered a bug.
A primary feature of Markdown syntax is its readability. Inline links suck for readability, meanwhile Obsidian’s way of making them (relatively) human-readable doesn’t conform to “proper” (Common) Markdown syntax at all and goes directly against the goal of making your vault portable and interoperable. …And yet Obsidian DOES support footnotes which aren’t part of the standard spec at all. What the heck?