There's a question worth asking about "free" software: free for whom? Most free commercial apps extract a price you don't see on any checkout page. Your usage patterns, your documents, your behavioral data — these get packaged and sold, used to train models, or used to target you with ads. The service is free. The data collection is the business model. The signup form is the first step in that process. Open source tools work differently. Not just philosophically — structurally. The code is public, the funding model doesn't depend on your data, and in many cases the tool runs entirely in your browser with nothing sent to any server. You don't need to create an account because there's no user database to put your record in. The Business Model Nobody Talks About When a company builds a "free" SaaS product and requires signup, they're building a user database.…