It may not phone home now, but it can do it tomorrow, or it can in be enabled and immediately disabled in some minor releases. Even if people didn't catch those shenanigans immediately it will be evident from the commit history. I'd say opensource forces certain discipline.

Also there is point of rugpull, or the product is getting cancelled. Few people will step up to maintain it; atleast until most users migrate to a different product.

As a paying kagi customer that uses orion, I’ll just point out that there’s a reason “enshittification” was the word of the year recently.

Much of it had to do with testimony during the Google antitrust trial. It’s hard to understand how Kagi wouldn’t be ultra-sensitive to guaranteeing there will be escape hatches if it enshittifies. (Your funding model is a great first step!)