SineZero: the Story, the Name, the Philosophy
The name sounds odd at first. Here’s why it made sense to me.
A sine wave is a clean, continuous signal — no jagged edges, no interruptions. Zero is the noise that gets added on top of good software. Put together: a clean signal, with the noise at zero. That’s the whole idea behind the name.
Web and desktop software lost some of its spirit over the past few years — buzzwords, subscriptions, vendor lock-in, tracking. Not everywhere. Open source is still full of people building honest, careful software. But enough of it went missing that I wanted to build toward it instead of just complaining about it.
Two things pushed me to actually start. WinRAR still won’t force you to pay — the trial ends, but the app keeps working. Obsidian works fully offline and never locks you out of your own files. That’s the standard I wanted to build to.
So — how this actually makes money, plainly:
The core app works fully, whether you’ve paid or not. No crippled trial, no nagging, no holding your files hostage. A paid upgrade unlocks Pro features on top — things you can live without on day one. Export is never part of that split; your data leaves whenever you want.
If I ever ask you to pay, it’s once. Not every month, forever. Recurring charges are exactly the noise this is trying to remove.
On updates: bug fixes and security patches are free for as long as I’m actively building this. A genuinely new version of the app — not a patch, a new generation — might be a separate, fairly priced upgrade for existing owners. I won’t promise updates forever, because that’s not fully mine to promise. I can tell you exactly how I’ll handle it while I’m here.
One more thing worth saying plainly: this is one person, not a company. No support team, no investors, no acquisition safety net. Just me, building this because I want it to exist — which means I owe you the honest version of what I can and can’t guarantee.
The one promise I’ll make without hedging: your files stay usable. Local formats, exportable, no lock-in — true whether SineZero is thriving in five years, or I’ve moved on to something else. That’s not a business decision. It’s the reason this exists. Looking forward to solving meaningful problems, and building something built to last.