For some people, open source still suggests something free and a little fragile. I hear that reservation regularly, and I understand it: in our heads, free rarely rhymes with serious. My experience says the opposite. The tools I use, Astro for the site, Sveltia for editing, are built in the open, reviewed by thousands of people, corrected continuously. The quality does not come despite the openness. It comes from it.

Inspectable, therefore reliable

An open source tool is one whose code I can read. I know what it does, how it does it, what it sends. No black box, no surprise on audit day. When a client asks me where their data goes, I can answer precisely. A proprietary service answers « trust us ». That may well be true. It is never verifiable.

The same question put to an open tool and to a closed service Two rows of boxes joined by arrows, under a question written at the top of the frame: where their data goes. The top row holds four boxes: code I can read, what it does, what it sends, then a last box drawn in the accent colour carrying the word verifiable; the three arrows joining them are solid. The bottom row holds three boxes: trust us, then a double walled box carrying the words black box, then a dashed box carrying the words may well be true; the arrow going into the double walled box is solid, the one coming out of it is dashed. WHERE THEIR DATA GOES AN OPEN SOURCE TOOL ANSWER PRECISELY code I can read what it does what it sends verifiable A PROPRIETARY SERVICE NEVER VERIFIABLE trust us black box may well be true
On one side the path can be followed box by box, on the other it stops at the first one.

No rent, no leash

Astro and Sveltia charge nothing and lock nothing in. No subscription creeping upward, no feature held to ransom, no vendor shutting up shop with your data. If tomorrow I want to swap a brick out, the format stays standard: HTML, Markdown, git. Open source is not the poor person’s economy. It is an insurance policy, taken out once and for all.

Numbers in the service of robustness

An open and popular project is tested by a whole world of uses. Bugs surface fast, fixes arrive fast, the documentation actually exists. A closed tool is only tested by the people selling it. Thousands of eyes beat one team and a secret. That, incidentally, is why I publish my own tools as open source: not out of ideology, out of consistency.

Who tests a closed tool, who tests an open project Two frames of the same size set side by side, filled with dots of the same diameter on the same grid. In the left frame, nine dots grouped at the centre and nothing around them. In the right frame, the whole grid is taken: five rows of fifteen dots drawn in the accent colour, from edge to edge. Under each frame, two lines of text: on the left the people selling it, then one team; on the right thousands of eyes, then a whole world of uses. A CLOSED TOOL AN OPEN AND POPULAR PROJECT the people selling it thousands of eyes one team a whole world of uses
On the same grid, what separates the two tools is not skill, it is number.

I do not choose these tools because they are free. I choose them because they are better, and above all because they stay better.