2026-07-01
Why I'm Rebuilding 100 Free Software Tools
You want to strip a watermark off a PDF. The free tool you install starts popping ads the next day, hijacks your homepage, quietly ships your data somewhere, and then makes you upgrade to export. The real pain of free software runs three layers deep: you're sold as the product, nobody's paid to polish it, and free is just the hook to force you to pay. For years you had no choice but to put up with it, because building a good replacement was too expensive. AI just cut that cost down to something one person can carry. I've already rebuilt six this way — SoloMD, Unterm, unfetch, Unflick, Ziplark, FreeID Photo — and there are ninety-four more to go.
