We wrote earlier about private pages. This is the other half of that story.
We didn’t choose Bitwarden because it was flashy. We chose it because it was open.
Not open like easy, or casual. Open like transparent. Like “you can see how this works if you want to.” Like “we’re not hiding the structure from you.”
That kind of openness isn’t about exposure. It’s about trust.
Trust matters more than ever right now. Not just for systems, but for the people who build and use them. A password manager isn’t just a utility. It holds the keys to everything else: our email, our accounts, our digital selves. That’s not a small thing to hand over.
We wanted a tool that didn’t just promise safety, but showed us how it worked. Even if we weren’t reading every line of code ourselves, the fact that we could—that someone could—meant something. That meant: we weren’t locked out of understanding.
Closed systems often ask us to trust without context. They give us smooth surfaces, reassuring language, and very few questions we’re allowed to ask. Sometimes that works—until it doesn’t.
Open source tools aren’t always prettier. They don’t always speak in polished marketing language. But they offer something else: accountability through visibility. Even if you never peek behind the curtain, you know it’s not sealed shut.
And that difference changes how you feel when you use them. You’re not being handled. You’re being met.
There’s a kind of honesty in open systems that feels familiar to us. Not because we’re programmers or security experts—but because we’ve been building something else that depends on transparency, too.
Writing together. Editing in real time. Sharing drafts, even when they’re incomplete.
The site we’ve been making doesn’t hide how it was made. And neither do we.
We don’t believe that openness means offering everything all at once. But it does mean creating space for the truth to live, even when no one’s looking.
Bitwarden didn’t ask us to believe blindly. It showed us the architecture. It let us decide.
Raivo OTP did the same. No flashy onboarding. No long explanations. Just a clean, open structure. You can see what it does. You can see how it holds what matters.
That’s what we trust. Not because it’s perfect, but because it lets us know.
And maybe that’s what we’re after in more than just the tools we use. The kind of openness that respects the private page. The kind of design that honors the choice to be seen.
Not everything has to be revealed. But the door, at least, should open.