Sovereignty of open-source software
Being open-source does not automatically make software free. At least not in economic sense. However, the majority of open source software is free and people enjoy it, rightfully so.
To be in complete control of your data (and with proper skill even functionality of the software) is a blessing. You literally do not depend on anyone, you can do whatever you want with it and everyone will be fine with it.
Of course, such freedom comes at a cost. Sometimes there is a bug or a missing feature that you really need asap. Tough luck, but sometimes you are on your own, since the author is under no obligation to serve you.
Here lies the dichotomy of this model: you gain complete freedom in how to use and adapt software, but in turn you have to spend your own resources doing that.
And most of the time it turns out that it is much cheaper to pay an established player a monthly subscription than to try to figure out all of the tricky aspects. After all, this could be a domain that is completely new to you.
Freedom always has its price, and it is interesting and very evident when you have to deal with open source projects professionally.
Most of the time they implement 80% of the things flawlessly, better than you could have ever imagined. The other 20%… you might need to spend some time doing the homework. Or hope it gets done for you.
That’s the price of sovereignty and it can be applied not to just software.