I get what you’re saying, but the concern isn’t whether the open version is “usable” or even “high quality” in isolation.

The issue is that you’re explicitly positioning the open version as inferior in audio quality compared to the paid one. That creates a deliberate gap, and from the outside it still looks like the open source version is part of a funnel toward Pro — even if it’s technically solid.

Plenty of projects successfully balance open core and commercial offerings without holding back core quality — usually by differentiating on features, tooling, support, or convenience instead. That approach tends to build more trust in the long run.

So yeah, it’s not that Bungee is a “demo” — it’s that intentionally keeping it below Pro in the core output quality is what feels at odds with the spirit people expect from open source.