For exactly 10 years, we have done this, as today marks the 10th anniversary of the initial Proton Mail crowdfunding campaign in 2014. Our journey has not been an easy one, but thanks to the support of all of you, we have persevered and thrived despite all the obstacles thrown in our way. For this reason, community is the most important thing to us, and we want to ensure that Proton continues to faithfully serve the community for the next 10 years and beyond. To achieve this goal, I, as Proton’s founder, joined together by Jason Stockman (Proton’s co-founder) and Dingchao Lu (Proton’s first employee), have jointly endowed the non-profit Proton Foundation through a donation of Proton shares. These transfers and commitments from the foundation founders make the Proton Foundation the primary shareholder of Proton and make irrevocable our wish that Proton remains in perpetuity an organization that places people ahead of profits.
I love Proton and this seems like a good step, but specifically OpenAI's very public corruption of values over the past couple of years under a similar model has me on edge. Can anyone enlighten...
I love Proton and this seems like a good step, but specifically OpenAI's very public corruption of values over the past couple of years under a similar model has me on edge. Can anyone enlighten me as to how Proton's move here is or isn't different from OpenAI's split "non-profit" model that clearly failed it's core mission?
I believe there is value in developing structures that help fulfill a mission without relying on single individuals, however just based on real world examples the difference between "privately owned effective company with top down leadership that I can place my trust in" and "bureaucratic and unfocused machine vulnerable to cultural takeovers with nobody to hold accountable" seems to be pretty consistent.
Maybe it's just my paranoia, but I just hope there's still a steady hand on the wheel instead of a board of directors in the shadows that will surely be a major target for nation states or corporations to attempt to compromise as soon as possible to steer them off-course.
Absolutely. I'm happy to pay for an email service that's at once on a mission to do good in a landscape where so many have thrown ethics under the bus, and one that continues to find new spaces to...
Absolutely. I'm happy to pay for an email service that's at once on a mission to do good in a landscape where so many have thrown ethics under the bus, and one that continues to find new spaces to grow.
I don't want to put all eggs in the proton basket, but I'm hopeful that they or a company like them ventures into the enterprise and office space. We need a proper office competitor.
Agreed. The reason I went this route was to de-google myself so I went Proton. Right now a true "office competitor" isn't available within one vendor like the big tech bros.
Agreed. The reason I went this route was to de-google myself so I went Proton. Right now a true "office competitor" isn't available within one vendor like the big tech bros.
I was curious about this as well. I pulled together a ChatGPT research conversation (which I realize may not align well with your feelings on OpenAI so please know I'm not trying to stir conflict,...
I was curious about this as well. I pulled together a ChatGPT research conversation (which I realize may not align well with your feelings on OpenAI so please know I'm not trying to stir conflict, GPT4o felt like the right tool given I don't have enough time to fully research this by hand). I got three sources out of it that seems to back up the idea that a swiss non-profit foundations being the major shareholder is a likely way to force the company to maintain values and mission even without the current leadership and since it has majority ownership it in theory can overrule rouge leaders on the for profit board. I'm sure there's loopholes, but this does seem like an honest attempt to protect the company potentially in response to seeing OpenAI's behavior.
Here are some sources that discuss the protections in place for Swiss foundations to ensure they adhere to their original stated purposes:
Duties of the Foundation Supervisory Authority:
What are the duties of the foundation supervisory authority? - This blog post explains the roles and responsibilities of the foundation supervisory authorities in Switzerland, including their preventive and repressive measures to ensure compliance.
Swiss Foundation Law Overview - This academic article discusses the regulations and legal requirements for foundations in Switzerland, including the supervisory framework.
For what it’s worth, I’m glad that this seems like it’s becoming somewhat of a trend with certain small tech companies. Kagi just recently announced that they’d switched to a Public Benefit...
[Swiss foundation] is a likely way to force the company to maintain values and mission
For what it’s worth, I’m glad that this seems like it’s becoming somewhat of a trend with certain small tech companies.
Kagi just recently announced that they’d switched to a Public Benefit Corporation, a company form which aims for similar goals.
And Bitwarden, while being a regular old incorporated company, has the main code portions open-sourced, which means the password manager will likely be around “forever” (aka, sufficiently long enough for not needing to worry about enshittification).
TIL that Proton offers cloud storage and switched from Dropbox to this, since they have sync clients now. Bonus points for just syncing my files and getting out of the way. Dropbox keeps trying to...
TIL that Proton offers cloud storage and switched from Dropbox to this, since they have sync clients now. Bonus points for just syncing my files and getting out of the way. Dropbox keeps trying to create engagement (i.e. annoyance), I guess to get people to use their other products.
I may switch when they inevitably increase the storage limit of 500gb, but for now I'll stick with MEGA, especially as they are testing out their own block storage platform. Great pricing and...
I may switch when they inevitably increase the storage limit of 500gb, but for now I'll stick with MEGA, especially as they are testing out their own block storage platform. Great pricing and ability to access via browser.
I do run e2 with a bucket that uses cryptomator and another that uses Rclone Crypt to get the benefit of e2e, but that doesn't give me great web UI like MEGA does.
I love Proton and this seems like a good step, but specifically OpenAI's very public corruption of values over the past couple of years under a similar model has me on edge. Can anyone enlighten me as to how Proton's move here is or isn't different from OpenAI's split "non-profit" model that clearly failed it's core mission?
I believe there is value in developing structures that help fulfill a mission without relying on single individuals, however just based on real world examples the difference between "privately owned effective company with top down leadership that I can place my trust in" and "bureaucratic and unfocused machine vulnerable to cultural takeovers with nobody to hold accountable" seems to be pretty consistent.
Maybe it's just my paranoia, but I just hope there's still a steady hand on the wheel instead of a board of directors in the shadows that will surely be a major target for nation states or corporations to attempt to compromise as soon as possible to steer them off-course.
Absolutely. I'm happy to pay for an email service that's at once on a mission to do good in a landscape where so many have thrown ethics under the bus, and one that continues to find new spaces to grow.
I don't want to put all eggs in the proton basket, but I'm hopeful that they or a company like them ventures into the enterprise and office space. We need a proper office competitor.
Same. I'd love to use ProtonVPN and ProtonPass, but I don't believe in this. I use Mullvad VPN and Bitwarden. It costs more, but it's just safer.
Agreed. The reason I went this route was to de-google myself so I went Proton. Right now a true "office competitor" isn't available within one vendor like the big tech bros.
I was curious about this as well. I pulled together a ChatGPT research conversation (which I realize may not align well with your feelings on OpenAI so please know I'm not trying to stir conflict, GPT4o felt like the right tool given I don't have enough time to fully research this by hand). I got three sources out of it that seems to back up the idea that a swiss non-profit foundations being the major shareholder is a likely way to force the company to maintain values and mission even without the current leadership and since it has majority ownership it in theory can overrule rouge leaders on the for profit board. I'm sure there's loopholes, but this does seem like an honest attempt to protect the company potentially in response to seeing OpenAI's behavior.
Here are some sources that discuss the protections in place for Swiss foundations to ensure they adhere to their original stated purposes:
Duties of the Foundation Supervisory Authority:
Foundation Oversight and Compliance:
Overview of Swiss Foundation Regulations:
Here's the link to the conversation if it's of interest to anyone else. I removed one of the final sources it gave me because it least on mobile it kept coming back as a broken link.
ChatGPT Web Search Research Conversation on Proton's Non-Profit Transition
For what it’s worth, I’m glad that this seems like it’s becoming somewhat of a trend with certain small tech companies.
Kagi just recently announced that they’d switched to a Public Benefit Corporation, a company form which aims for similar goals.
And Bitwarden, while being a regular old incorporated company, has the main code portions open-sourced, which means the password manager will likely be around “forever” (aka, sufficiently long enough for not needing to worry about enshittification).
TIL that Proton offers cloud storage and switched from Dropbox to this, since they have sync clients now. Bonus points for just syncing my files and getting out of the way. Dropbox keeps trying to create engagement (i.e. annoyance), I guess to get people to use their other products.
I may switch when they inevitably increase the storage limit of 500gb, but for now I'll stick with MEGA, especially as they are testing out their own block storage platform. Great pricing and ability to access via browser.
I do run e2 with a bucket that uses cryptomator and another that uses Rclone Crypt to get the benefit of e2e, but that doesn't give me great web UI like MEGA does.