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Proton is taking its privacy-first apps to a nonprofit foundation model (arstechnica.com)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Proton, known for its secure email and productivity services, is transitioning to a nonprofit foundation model, ensuring it remains mission-focused without reliance on external subsidies.
The Proton Foundation, now the primary shareholder, is located in Switzerland, which mandates that foundations act according to their established purpose, bolstering Proton's commitment to privacy.
Proton has expanded its offerings to include cloud storage, password management, calendars, and VPN services, all designed with end-to-end encryption and hosted in Switzerland, enhancing its privacy-first approach.

We believe that if we want to bring about large-scale change, Proton can’t be billionaire-subsidized (like Signal), Google-subsidized (like Mozilla), government-subsidized (like Tor), donation-subsidized (like Wikipedia), or even speculation-subsidized (like the plethora of crypto “foundations”)," Proton CEO Andy Yen wrote in a blog post announcing the transition. "Instead, Proton must have a profitable and healthy business at its core."

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[–] [email protected] 103 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Ok. I will now seriously consider moving over to proton. I can't trust a for-profit buisness to stay true to its mission. However, Open-AI has shown that I can't blindly trust a non-profit to do so as well, but its 'towards' being able to trust.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The nice thing is proton has been slowly making more and more of its codebases open source, and has consistently done the right thing despite whatever winds of change come their way. I have had proton unlimited for about a year now and I am so glad. It was a great way to remove Google from my life but it didn’t require a particularly high level of technical knowledge. It’s a little clunky at times, but honestly it works very well.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

I've had it for about 8 years. Those years were a treat. "oh hi! We just created another product which would make your life easier and more safe. We just added it to your prescription for free. Have a nice day!" I started with free email, I started paying when they introduced vpn. They just keep on delivering, year after year, they never disappointed me with any decision they made. I just wish there were more companies like proton: creating the best product they can, for the good of the customer and for society.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

That's kind of what I'm thinking too.

Legitimately, the degree to which proton advertises, the sheer amount of blog spam and such, made me very, very resistant to it. I really don't care how private it all is or how well it works, I have spent enough time on the internet and engaged with enough small tech company services to recognize a fierce push for growth, and experience has taught me to avoid a for-profit company that sells to you that hard. One day the growth will stop, and the cannibalizing begins.

But a move to a non-profit model is, at least theoretically, a move in the right direction. I'm more willing to engage.

I still don't trust that they won't change their mind down the road, but it's a start.

And the point about OpenAI is moot because being non-profit doesn't make the actual purpose of the company any less shitty. Especially when Microsoft was feeding it money for the purpose of harvesting what they would create. They still had shitty motives and created a tool that is very ethically "questionable" at best, and that was true from the very beginning.The fact their ethics team was gutted the moment they tried to exercise their purpose tells you everything.

The non-profit company created a tool that will be used primarily by for-profit companies and hurt individuals. The moniker barely applies.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

OpemAi had a for profit division though

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

As does Proton?