Ask HN: Build trust for closed source product
I'm a developer of an early B2C niche product. Software is free and intended to be free. My plan is to charge for services only when there a demand for that service. So pretty fair deal - no rug-pulling, just a free software without any catch.
My audience care about privacy and security a lot. At least 5% of people asked if it's possible to make product open source.
With all respect to open-source I think it removes one of the moats - code. With AI and things like https://malus.sh/ it feels like open sourcing commercial product is way to loose one of the moats. It's not quite possible to vibe-code similar product at the moment (I honestly tried - LLMs are not there yet for my language and domain).
Thus said, I understand that people are not asking about the code itself. It will just feel more secure if they can skim it and verify if there is any security/privacy problems.
Is there any way to build trust without giving the code away?