"Open source" isn't just a euphemism for "free". The full phrasing is "free and open source software" or FOSS, and the "free" means liberated, not unpaid. The idea is that collaboration is preferable to exploitation, and most of the internet's most basic protocols are rooted in the open source heyday of the early internet.

Over the years, capitalists have fought to enclose the digital commons, but open source programming continues to thrive under the hood. If you've ever thought to yourself that "free" must mean low quality, you might have internalized capitalism to unpack. Open source tools are some of the highest quality tech out there.

Speaking of capitalism and its endless quest to capture, enclose, and exploit literally everything decent and good in the world, one of its most predatory methods has been giving their service away "free" in exchange for access to your personal data, and then selling it to advertisers and the surveillance state.

If you bristle at the idea of paying for software, or even just tipping your open source programmer, this is an opportunity to unlearn commodification. Why shouldn't the people toiling away to give you liberated tools that protect your privacy get paid for their labor? Why can't their value be rooted in mutuality rather than transactionality?

Tip your open source developers!! They have been toiling, often thanklessly, on the front lines of resistance for decades.