Philosophy

Why free

I love building software, and it’s fun. Building it no longer takes the time or money it used to, so I can afford to share what I make.

When anyone can build software with AI, experience in building it matters more than ever. Giving away what I build is how I share mine.

Why now

Every experienced engineer has a list of things they would build with more time. They know the problem, what people need and what breaks in production.

AI shortens implementation. Picania, my estate-sale app, went from its first commit on September 5, 2026 to its first closed-test release on September 16, and to version 0.6.1 on September 24. I estimate that scope at 15 to 20 months by hand. Not every project will move that fast. Picania itself is free to install, with an optional paid subscription coming soon.

What free means here

My free apps are free in full: no ads, no analytics, no selling data, no account with me and no paid tier that locks features away. If an app needs a paid service like cloud AI, you use your own key or account and pay the provider directly.

Isn’t this just freeware?

By price, yes. But for many people freeware means ads, tracking and constant upgrade prompts: software that is free because you are the product. My free apps have none of that.

Why Android

Android shares my philosophy of sharing: its foundation is open source ↗, for anyone to build on. And recent on-device AI on Pixels and other phones makes a lot of interesting things possible.

Open or closed source?

My Android apps are closed source. What I give away is the finished, maintained app, not its code. Opening the source would also mean reviewing outside contributions and running a community, and I’d rather spend that time on the apps.

When a project extends an existing open-source project, or plugs into one under its license, it stays open. Multicam extends Groundlight’s framegrab-mcp-server under Apache-2.0, and LampenCam’s Blender extension is GPL-3.0-or-later, like Blender itself.

Your turn

Pick something from your own list, build it, and give it away under your own name and license. That’s all Software Philanthropy is. If you do, I’d like to see it.