What's the goal of a root system, and what's the goal of the other products?

The goal here is that you own your life and your AI. The files sit on your machine, the accounts are in your name, and you can change any of it on a Tuesday afternoon without asking anyone.

A subscription product has a different job to do. It has to be worth renewing, so it gets built to be used inside itself, and the companies doing that well are doing exactly what they should.

New features land in those tools every week, and plenty of them are aimed at people who enjoy new features. What's in the Repo(sitory) got built for a quality of life: fewer hours spent doing the same thing twice, and a business that still works the way you left it in 3 years.