[EbNar]

Just curious, but is this really a big deal? As a customer, you already trust Kagi enough to feed them your entire search history, so I guess you don't think they're bad actors. Thus, why you find problematic the (momentary?) "unopeness" of the browser? I'd gladly try it (I'm on Arch), even just out of curiosity (unlikely to make it my main, though).

Jeez, downvoted for asking about context? People, calm down.

[JohnFen]

Requiring it to be open source is not just about trusting the publisher. There are a bunch of other possible reasons, including wanting to support open source as a counterbalance to proprietary software.

For me, it's a big deal (although not a dealbreaker) for that reason. If I have the option of two different pieces of software, one being open source and the other proprietary, I'll choose the open source one every time unless there's something really exceptional about the proprietary one. But that's very rare.

I was just trying to think of any proprietary software I use outside of work (where I don't have a choice) or games. There must be at least one, but I can't think of what it is.

[EbNar]

Understood. Obviously, all things being equal, I prefer (F)OSS too. Anyway, I'll probably play a bit with Orion, if possible.

[freediver]

Side thought: nobody's ever asked us to open source Kagi Search. Curious why the expectation differs.

[hobofan]

> As a customer, you already trust Kagi enough to feed them your entire search history, so I guess you don't think they're bad actors.

Do I? I'm not going to post sensitive information into a search engine no matter who runs it.

My search history ain't worth much. What the contents of e.g. my bank website are is.

[barbazoo]

There’s still trusting Kagi that what’s in the binary was built from the open source code right?

[EbNar]

Fine. Thank you for the clarification.

[hamdingers]

> you already trust Kagi enough to feed them your entire search history

Not necessarily, Kagi provides a feature[1] that anonymizes all your searches. I set it up and haven't thought about it since.

1. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-pass.html

[t-writescode]

They give you a key and only if you have a higher tier account. The act of doing that requires that there is a step in the process where they know you’re requesting a key and who you are. They could bind them in the backend if they wanted, before giving it to you.

You’re still trusting them. Not to mention they could round them all up by IP or browser fingerprinting.

There is still some level of trust.

I happen to trust them enough for that; but it is still trust.

[globular-toast]

> Just curious, but is this really a big deal?

Yes, it's a big deal. I've lived in the non-free software world before and struggled to get out. I'm not going back.

[leephillips]

Google started as a company that seemed worthy of trust. The founders had ideals and followed them. Look what happened. Companies can turn evil surprisingly quickly. I'm also a Kagi customer, but I wouldn’t use a closed-source browser either.

[mghackerlady]

Because free (as in the FSF definition) software should be a human right. We deserve to know how our tools work and be able to improve them and use them as we please. Free (as in freedom) software doesn't need to be monetarily free either. Make it so the purchase of orion comes with the binaries and a copy of the source code, or provide it on request. This has proved to be sustainable before, arguably the defacto standard for pixel art is (or was before a license change made it so you can't redistribute the source code) free software, despite costing money