As much as I'd appreciate more open source for the sake of transparency, binaries provided on websites aren't guaranteed to match the source code provided and I'd assume most users are pulling binaries versus building themselves.
Practically every platform has multiple software stores these days and many FOSS stores make their build logs available. Some take it a step further and provide reproducible builds, which is more or less there as far as source to binary traceability and binary trustworthiness is concerned. These are good enough reasons to open up the source, ignoring the other advantages just this once.
This is true, and this is where trusted repositories come in.
I don't necessarily have to trust each individual app on fdroid or in the Debian repos. I have trust the maintainers are building them properly, and those people are not the same people developing the core app.
The ability to do so provides some protection. If someone pulls and builds and cannot reproduce the binaries, they can at least try to get the word out. Closed-source prevents even the opportunity. Even source-available is better than closed.
My concern is Kagi isn't/doesn't make as much as they need/hope to with their brand model. If they are ever disappointed in the results of building their brand, it's quite easy to see why they would be fine selling out.
Hell, WhatsApp started out as a privacy focused messaging app before selling out to Facebook/Meta. Now it's getting ads, nobody believes a privacy focus anymore, it's had a commercial message channel push, and so on. They are far from the first example of a tech company/product trading the mission/brand value for more money.
Bless the VLC developer for refusing offers for millions of dollars to put crap in VLC even though he knows the project could just be forked after and bless Gorhill for the same on uBO but the real trust in these things comes from the code being open source rather than faith the developers would never sell out.
