You really just need an honest product. Plenty of companies are perfectly happy to charge several hundred dollars for their product and then still use it to spy on their users so that they can stuff their pockets with even more money at our continued expense.
> “Free” makes honest software impossible because software is labor intensive.
I wouldn't say "impossible", because lots of really great and privacy respecting software exists even while being well maintained. VLC is my go to example: Free, popular, as good if not better than commercial alternatives (given all it's capable of), and still extremely privacy friendly after all these years.
