I’m happy to see this announcement. However, just transitioning to a non-profit does not make an organization good. They can still be greedy and take advantage of their user base. That being said, it seems Proton’s mission statement resonates with a non-profit type structure. When you are accountable to the shareholders, they become the priority.
Proton is transitioning towards a non-profit structure | Proton
Submitted 2 months ago by just_another_person@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://proton.me/blog/proton-non-profit-foundation
Comments
theonetruedroid@lemmy.world 2 months ago
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 2 months ago
“don’t let perfect get in the way of good” or whatever that saying is. One step at a time, yeah?
j_elgato@leminal.space 2 months ago
“Perfect is the enemy of good.”
Bad, also, is the enemy of good…
I think maybe good walked into the wrong damn neighborhood.
restingboredface@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
If I remember right, OpenAi started with this model too, and they do lots of shady stuff. Not that this is the plan for Proton, but I completely agree that simply creating a nonprofit that owns the for profit brand doesn’t guarantee good behavior.
erwan@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Yes Mozilla is a good example. They’re run like any other Silicon Valley company and spend more in C-suite develop their damn product.
nasi_goreng@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Bad example. There are plenty of non-profit FOSS services that do well and serve the community.
Unmapped@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
This is what made me finally fully switch my email and docs to proton. I’m so close to being able to delete my google account now.
Well this and the docs live collaboration feature they recently added.
whotookkarl@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Switched mail and I’ll switch VPN once my old sub expires.
Scolding7300@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I thought it’ll take many more years until the acquired Standard Notes
Baggins@feddit.uk 2 months ago
90 a year though? That’s taking the piss. Notesnook has all their features and more for 49.99 And that’s on top of Proton’s main fee. That’s one option I won’t be taking.
MerchantsOfMisery@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Ya know, you may have just helped me finally make the full switch. Thank you
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I wish it worked in the (iOS) app or had its own. A browser only experience isn’t good enough for me to use it.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 2 months ago
Doesn’t really mean much to me, personally. OpenAI, Mozilla, RaspPi, and the NFL all did the same thing. Not until the entire company becomes a non-profit.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Cool. I switched to Tuta because it fits my use case better (2 domains, one for my personal email and one for everything else). I don’t need any of the bells and whistles Proton has, and I also don’t want to pay extra to get more domains. The Tuta app kinda sucks, but it gets the job done. I’m hoping my wife and kids will be interested in private email, but they don’t seem to care, and I don’t think they’d like the tradeoffs.
Now, if Proton revises their tiers, I might be interested. Give me something like the Tuta tiers, and I’ll probably switch to it. I prefer the UX of Proton, but $10/month is a bit steep for me, especially since I’m not going to use the other stuff they’re bundling in (I use Bitwarden for PW manager, have my own NAS, and I prefer Mullvad over Proton for VPN).
That said, it’s super cool that they’re going non-profit. When that’s done, I’ll give it another look.
user224@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
They also have mail-only tier at 4.99.
doctortran@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Does that include the IMAP bridge and multiple addresses?
just_another_person@lemmy.world 2 months ago
[deleted]blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Your response makes it sound like you’re responding some kind of rage-rant. But from my reading, the post you responded to basically just lists a few things they like and dislike - clearly given as personal opinions. So your response reads as unprovoked hostility.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
?
I think Proton is a cool project, I’m just a little disappointed at their pricing tiers. It’s probably fine for a lot of people, and hopefully becoming a non-profit encourages them to improve the value at each tier.
I actually used to pay for Proton when I was consulting. I think it’s a fantastic service, but now that it’s not really a business expense, I find it’s a little to expensive. So I have my business domain, my personal email domain, and a “junk email” domain all at Tuta, and I like that setup. But it’s not worth $10/month for me, it’s worth about $3-4/month, so I use Tuta. Privacy is really important to me, but price is also important, and Tuta checks both boxes.
I know I’m an outlier, just giving my 2c that Proton is a good service, and I hope they adjust their pricing with their new non-profit model.
mholiv@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Did you respond to the wrong message?
PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
what’s with the hostility?
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m sorry I took this username before you got it. Clearly you deserve it more with posts like that.
qevlarr@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Wtf
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Touch grass.
Arn_Thor@feddit.uk 2 months ago
You say you use Bitwarden. Is that self hosted by any chance? If so, how do you handle the potential for an outage or server failure, where you’d presumably need some of the passwords to fix the problem in the first place.
sudneo@lemm.ee 2 months ago
The Bitwarden client has all the data cached, so the server can be down and you still get access to the passwords (same for internet connection).
lemming741@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I also self host vault warden, it’s pretty straight forward. Like the other person said, it caches locally.
superglue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
The local cache solves this problem mainly. Mine also replicates to one of my other servers occasionally.
doctortran@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Problem with Tuta for me is its too closed off.
Proton at least offers an IMAP bridge, Tuta utterly refuses to let you use your email outside their apps, which makes it more of a messaging app. And the fact there’s no way to export everything easily or even forward messages rubs me the wrong way. I tried them and have been using them for about 2 years but I’d definitely love to get away from it.
I’m tired of these walled gardens. I don’t give a damn how secure it is, if I can’t leave it with my shit, then no thanks.
MadBigote@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Are you me? Lol I feel the same about tuta, yet I such with them. I am waiting for my wife to care for her privacy and switch to a family bundle with tuta.
Got my own NAS and a Bit warden server for PW. I changed Mullvad over AirVPN once they stopped supporting port forwarding, though.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Yup, confirmed, I am you.
The Tuta app kinda sucks, especially for searching, but I do that rarely enough that it’s fine. It did annoy me a bit when I was traveling in Canada and needed to find my confirmation code for something (had to connect to their wifi, wait for emails to download, search, etc), but it got the job done. I love that I can just add another person to my plan for another €3 or whatever. I’m going to try to get my kids interested even if my wife isn’t, and it’s nice that I can just add a little at a time. With Proton, that would jump up to $15 for two users, $24 for my family (three kids). That’s a lot more than Tuta, which is just €3/user/month, so my entire family would be €15/month ($17/month), and I don’t need to get everyone on all at once (i would probably only add one or two at first).
So Tuta meets my basic needs, is priced very competitively, and the client is FOSS. I’m actually excited about some upcoming updates (looks like having the subject in the notification just landed, but hasn’t hit F-Droid yet), and I love how their roadmap is very open.
That said, I do miss the UX of Proton. I just don’t think that’s worth more for fewer features I actually use. Hopefully that changes.
subtext@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This is definitely great news and refreshing to see from a company, but this came out two months ago.
Published on June 17, 2024
rockSlayer@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Good. Profit and privacy are mutually exclusive in this industry.
Matt@lemdro.id 2 months ago
Proton is still a for-profit company and has shareholders who expect to to make money. The change is that the largest shareholder of the for-profit company is now a separate non-profit organization. It is still a positive move, but not entirely what the marketing makes it seem.
Scolding7300@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You mean record breaking profit and privacy
BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I would imagine any privacy measures cartels take are seen as overhead more than anything else
treadful@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
That’s roughly the opposite of what the article says.
tooLikeTheNope@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Yeah but this Proton blog post dates back 2 months now…
Liz@midwest.social 2 months ago
They just pushed an email announcement out, which is probably where OP heard about it.
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 2 months ago
And that makes it irrelevant because…? I’m a subscriber and I wasn’t aware of this until this post…
nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
They literally sent the email out within the last 36 hours. My work account got it this morning, and my personal last night.
ArchRecord@lemm.ee 2 months ago
The email was more of a summary of past changes.
The actual donation of shares to the Proton Foundation was a little while ago, and anyone directly subscribed to the Proton Blog probably already saw it (myself included), so seeing it show up again as if it was new news probably just felt a bit jarring to some people.
rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Good for them, I love being able to play Windows games on Linux.
ModerateImprovement@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Just wanted to point out that it does not change anything from privacy and security perspective about their products.
Also they are still operating as a normal company internally (they still offer their vpn through a third party provider and they still work to achieve the highest income from their products).
Venicon@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Switched from gmail to Protonmail and Outlook to Tuta.io and love it! Companies that put privacy and the individual first.
palarith@aussie.zone 2 months ago
How is spam filtering compared to gmail.
Afraid to switch as gmail spam filtering is excellent
brachypelmasmithi@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I’ve been using proton for a few months now with a yearly Mail Plus subscription and I have yet to receive an actual spam e-mail. Your experience might be different than mine since I take precautions not to invite spam in the first place, but even then, Proton looks to be doing an excellent job
priapus@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I’ve been using Protonmail as my primary address for a few years now. I’m yet to have a single spam email make it to my inbox. In comparison, I use my gmail less and I’ve had a few blatant crypto scams make it to my inbox.
Venicon@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Honestly I’ve not experienced any on either of them!
TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
I switched to Proton Mail in 2019, and recently started switching to their VPN service to use port forwarding. Glad to see Proton is putting their money where their mouth is.
MerchantsOfMisery@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
I’ve been too critical of them in the early days and will admit that many of the issues that plagued their VPN service years ago have now been fixed.
Baccata@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Didn’t they get shit recently for AI and crypto related decisions ? Did they backtrack on that ?
Ilandar@aussie.zone 2 months ago
How is this related to what the previous person said? Do you understand what “enshittification” is? Proton Wallet is an entirely separate application while the AI feature in Proton Mail is completely optional. Neither of these decisions have impacted the user experience of Proton customers.
asap@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Do you understand what enshittification is? It’s a slow descent over a long period. You add optional, privacy-respecting AI now, and over time, (like a decade,) it becomes more shitty until eventually all your data is opted in to centralized data harvesting or wherever.
I’m an Unlimited paid Proton user, and these new trend worry me too. Enshittification is a slow process. I watched Google turn from “Do no evil” to what they are today, and I’m too tired to want to watch the same entire process happen again to Proton.
el_abuelo@programming.dev 2 months ago
Even if they did, so what? We should not then recognise positive decisions?
If we don’t allow companies and people to make any mistakes, for fear of being forever scorned, then we’ll end up with either unprogressive risk averse companies that cannot compete against their peers, or a host of good companies that go bankrupt from the slightest misstep.
Personally I’m glad companies such as proton exist, and are prepared to take risks, as they are currently our best hope against the likes of Google and Meta.
gencha@lemm.ee 2 months ago
They did not. This is another marketing play
Eikov@lemmy.world 2 months ago
If so, will they re-think tiers? Or maybe they could give the option for users to choose what they need exactly and what they’re willing to pay? (i.e current Proton plan that costs 8-12€ per month is too much for me, but I would gladly pay like 5€ monthly for little storage, VPN and few email aliases)
asap@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I would gladly pay like 5€ monthly for little storage, VPN and few email aliases)
Includes VPN with P2P and streaming, Drive, Proton Pass, etc.
ccdfa@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I don’t think this plan supports P2P. You’re still on the free plan with the VPN
Asudox@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This is old news. Why are you posting this just now? I mean I don’t really care much. I transitioned to Posteo as soon as I learned that they stored the private key. They don’t even let you use your own GPG key, useless honeypot. Their recent bitcoin wallet supports this. If they cared about privacy, they wouldn’t go with Bitcoin. They have been ignoring requests for monero since years.
sudneo@lemm.ee 2 months ago
You can use your own GPG key (proton.me/support/importing-openpgp-private-key or using the bridge), whatever tool does the signing needs the key (duh) so I am not sure what you mean by “they store your private key” (they stored it encrypted as per documentation proton.me/support/how-is-the-private-key-stored), their AI was specifically designed as local, exactly to be privacy friendly, plus is a feature that can be disabled (when it will reach general subscriptions).
I don’t care about cyptocurrencies, but I suppose they started with the most popular, nothing to do with privacy as they just let you store your currencies.
Anyway, use what you like the most, of course, but yours don’t look very solid motivations, quite a lot of incorrect information, I hope you didn’t take your decision based on it.
Asudox@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You upload your private key to the cloud. Encrypted or not, this is a bad idea. No thanks. They can do the signing with my public key and then I’ll do the decryption with my own private key locally without them storing it.
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This is old
“I know this. Why doesn’t everyone else know this? They should be me, I’m the smartest man alive.”
I really don’t care much
proceeds to type an entire paragraph as to why you don’t care
gencha@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Is this going to be the same kind of non-profit as OpenAI? With a mission to improve the world? Yeah, let’s see how that goes. Another Proton marketing play on their set track to enshittification.
P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br 2 months ago
OpenAI is now for-profit since they got funded by Microsoft.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 2 months ago
It’s not really that simple. They’re both:
Proton is doing the same thing.
CynicusRex@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Then they should move away from crypto“currencies” too. I deleted my Protonmail account when Proton began peddling these multi-level marketing pyramid Ponzi schemes, i.e., crypto“currencies”.
karpintero@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s refreshing to see in a world of ever increasing enshittification. Wish more companies move in this direction.
FatTony@discuss.online 2 months ago
Yeah, kinda makes you wonder as to why proton is adding A.I. features though.
mholiv@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I think it might be because AI (aka LLMs) is genuinely useful when used properly.
I use AI all the time to write emails. I give the LLM the email thread along with instructions like “I can’t make it Tuesday ask if they can do Wednesday at 2pm”
The AI will write out an email that’s polite and relevant in context. Totally worth it.
I think the problem is people/companies trying to shove LLMs where they don’t make sense.
lemming741@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Non-profit doesn’t mean that no one makes money. But it does mean they pay less taxes. If the C suite is full of funders, you can pay them in bonuses.
charitywatch.org/nonprofit-compensation-packages-…
forgotaboutlaye@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Maybe to keep pace with trends, and be able to put a check in that box amongst competitors