With an open source implementation out there, anyone can do it merely pulling a Docker container, and without paying Tailscale.
Regardless I manage a dozen users with no issue using Embarks container; once they’re setup I touch nothing.
Paying people is not working with people; it’s working with a specific group. Open source is working with people.
The reality is that making software, like any other human endeavour, takes time and energy. Paying one another money is a rather well-established mechanism of rewarding and incentivising that time and energy (since not everyone wants to work free of charge to make and maintain software for you, out of the goodness of their hearts, no matter how much you insist that you're owed their unpaid labour).
There are small and local means of getting free food, or free woodworking, etc, but the general reality is that a high-quality high-dependency maintained product, over the long term, is more feasible when it's paid.
A fully functional web app in a Docker image is what wg-ui is.
Web companies could probably just provide API keys for customers at this point and abandon UX teams.
If it’s a real human problem, humans will solve it. If it’s instigated due to someone with coins in their pocket to mesmerize lizard brains, it’s a synthetic solution that will vanish with the synthetic driver of the work; payments.
Just because paying for things is common throughout history does not mean it’s necessary or the best choice long term; see Netflix propping up payment flows churning out crap. It means meat based tape recorders simply LARP the past.