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Proton is taking its privacy-first apps to a nonprofit foundation model
- jiveturkey 2y agoWell this is only as strong as the makeup of the board! OpenAI has the same model. > Among other members of the Foundation's board is Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of HTML, HTTP, and almost everything else about the web. Well that's good news!
- elashri 2y agoThat seems to be a board of ex-CERNers.
- neilv 2y agoYes. Though I'm having trouble imagining Tim Berners-Lee as an enforcer, able to keep a for-profit side in line, in a post-Altman boardroom. (Whether it's slamming a rogue exec up against a pillar in a parking garage whilst cursing corrective instructions, or deploying his vast power to destroy his enemies from a distance, or whatever skills and resolve are required.)
- jiveturkey 2y agoI can't wait to see the movie!
- neilv 2y agoDON LAFONTAINE: In a world... Where the Internet was betrayed... One man... Is called to serve again. And he's dispensing his own brand of standard.
- devwastaken 2y agoReminder that Proton is not "private". They have all the keys, and willingly operate in a jurisdiction where they bend over backwards for ridiculous court orders. From their own transparency page: Number of legal orders: 6,378 Contested orders: 407 Orders complied with: 5,971 They did this to expose protestors and people who upset the powers that be, rarely real criminals. They could choose to operate in a country that respects rights and design their tech so that there's nothing valuable to hand over. This is what Mullvad did. *Edit: HN has been overwhelmed with poor quality users and bots growing in the last few years. Same as reddit there are paid services used to manipulate voting. HN needs to migrate away from this in order for real discussions to return.
- drpossum 2y agoYou should back up your claim of "they have all the keys", because for things like email and file contents they claim they cannot decrypt them because they do not have those keys (which you have said they do). I believe it was stated on the page you copied those stats from https://proton.me/legal/transparency https://proton.me/legal/transparency > As stated in our Privacy Policy, all emails, files and invites are encrypted and we have no means to decrypt them.
- gobip 2y agoThey're all encrypted by themselves and if you use your own gpg key they will replace it. They're all encrypted except when you pay more for dedicated smtp. They're all encrypted except when they give up logs they promised they didn't have. And so on.
- WhackyIdeas 2y agoListen, if you don’t trust their ProtonDrive - GPG encrypt before uploading. If you don’t trust their email, GPG your message and paste it in or include as an attachment. There are a lot of ways to be able to use proton without trusting them… and if you are an activist of any sort, like just stop oil or cnd, then I am sure they will be doing all of that. I am not an activist so I don’t need to jump through such loopholes. I don’t despise proton as much as I despise most of Silicon Vally though. I just hope they fight every single court order, because there will be lots of good people being targeted. However, I reckon that is wishful thinking.
- jszymborski 2y agoCryptomator is great for the ProtonDrive example: https://cryptomator.org/ https://cryptomator.org/
- WhackyIdeas 2y agoCool idea. But, if I personally wanted that functionality I would code my own solution with a shell script I think (because it is super easy to do).
- Vaslo 2y agoWhile still working on lots of stuff in their portfolio, I’ve been extremely pleased with their entire portfolio. They just continue to improve and have become a viable competitor to Google in all but the photos area, and they are working on that.
- brnt 2y agoI wish they'd have something more sensible for people that need a few inboxen at a domain. Having to pay full price for every new family member added to a family domain for instance is a bit too expensive for my tastes.
- emaro 2y agoProton's announcement was posted here (10 comments so far): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40704191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40704191
- vzaliva 2y agoThe new emerging hybrid model of non-profit foundations paired with for-profit businesses is certainly interesting, as it combines some "greater good" principles with the ability to build products and run businesses in a modern competitive market. I feel it may take some time to work out the details of these models. The biggest example we've seen is OpenAI, which, in my opinion, still hasn't solved this model and is torn between lucrative multibillion business opportunities and adherence to its founding principles.
- DowagerDave 2y agoI agree we'll need to work out the kinks, but the big difference is it's hard to see a path towards a gazillion $$$ upside for Proton, while with OpenAI it seemed inevitable. Maybe the AI/ML space will be perfect for a hybrid organization in 30-50 years?
- PhilippGille 2y ago> it combines some "greater good" principles with the ability to build products and run businesses in a modern competitive market There's also the PBC (Public Benefit Corporation), which in addition to profit / shareholder value explicitly defines positive impact on society as a goal, and exists since 2010 in some states, while in others only since 2022 [1]. But as far as I understand there are no legal requirements or audits that ensure those goals are followed. Kagi (the search engine, popular in the HN community and I'm a happy customer myself) is one example of a PBC [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation [2] https://blog.kagi.com/what-is-next-for-kagi#4 https://blog.kagi.com/what-is-next-for-kagi#4
- sgent 2y agoTrue, but PBC's are still for profit corporations and cannot benefit from tax and other benefits afforded to not for profits.
- riffraff 2y agohow about mozilla? I believe it's been running with such a setup (foundation+corporation) for a long time.
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] More discussion on official post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40704191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40704191
- rodolphoarruda 2y agoBy looking at the headline I thought Proton would be changing to become something like Mint Linux and not Ubuntu Linux. But then after reading the article, Proton looks more like Ubuntu with Canonical backing it.
- forwardemail 2y ago[dead]
- neilv 2y agoHopefully this works better for Proton than it has for OpenAI or Mozilla, from a non-profit mission perspective.
- thenoblesunfish 2y agoCan you be more specific about how Mozilla has gone astray?
- suprjami 2y agoAfter Eich was ousted and formed Brave, Mozilla's C-suite are led by an ex-Kinsey person and are extracting all the wealth from the company in the form of massive executive bonuses. They are now an "AI company" and Firefox isn't a concern anymore. I expect Mozilla to die within the next few years and the web to become Chromium only, finally solving my chronic online-ness.
- BrendanEich 2y ago(McKinsey -- but bad under any name!)
- yieldcrv 2y agoGet rid of SMS based anti-spam on signup to be a convincing privacy first Find a different anti-spam measure
- protonmail 2y agoIn the last few months, we have reduced the SMS verification upon signup to a minimum.
- yieldcrv 2y agojust because a VPN or exit node has been used before doesn't mean SMS is the best anti spam measure, I don't know what data you're operating on or what's better for that data, but it undermines the privacy aspect for an SMS prompt to ever be triggered
- tgsovlerkhgsel 2y agoSince the title confused me: "nonprofit foundation model" = "a business model based on a non-profit foundation", not "a machine learning Foundation Model built on a non-profit basis".
- Theory42 2y agoWhy aren't cooperative business models more common among software companies? Starting a software company typically doesn't require a large amount of capital, especially with open source projects where individual contributions can play a significant role. In these cases, a cooperative model could effectively distribute ownership among the contributors, essentially making them co-owners. This approach seems simpler than managing a hybrid of nonprofit and for-profit elements.