This is a based move, didn’t expect that, lol.
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’m really curious about how much these 3 have given up personally in order to make this happen. Incredible news.
I thought proton was enterprise software?
Not sure how the link is related. But now that you mention this, I do wonder how this will affect the business features.
I personally think focusing on business consumers more was a good way forward. We need a good business alternative to google and microsoft.
But from the main text it looks like they are still operating Proton AG as a for-profit company? "For this reason, our services will continue to be offered through the for-profit Swiss corporation Proton AG, which now operates under the supervision of the non-profit foundation, which is its primary shareholder. "
Just the Proton Foundation is a separate not-for-profit entity which acts as the stakeholder for the business parts. (Not a business person, sorry for the sloppy terms)
So does the foundation offer startup money for up-and-comers and/or infrastructure support?
Yeah, it’s a similar corporate structure to Mozilla and Signal, where both foundations are just the owners of for-profit businesses. The main benefit is just that they can’t really be taken over.
So basically, nothing about Proton should really change at all, but this news gives you assurance that Proton will be able to continue their current trajectory indefinitely. It’s good news if you already like what Proton’s doing now, otherwise it probably doesn’t affect you.
Instead, Swiss foundations and their board of trustees are legally obligated to act in accordance with the purpose for which they were established, which, in this case, is to defend Proton’s original mission. As the largest voting shareholder of Proton, no change of control can occur without the consent of the foundation, allowing it to block hostile takeovers of Proton, thereby ensuring permanent adherence to the mission.
The foundation will also offer grants to non-Proton entities, apparently:
I think as long as they are still in charge (not as shareholders, but decision-makers of the non-profit), they can pay themselves a good salary, instead of a dividend. (Like the infamous Mitchell Baker, former CEO of Mozilla.) So I don’t think this is necessarily costing them anything in the short term and will increase the credibility of Proton as a business, although it probably means they can’t become billionaires by selling out to a Big Tech company in the long term.
Well the question is valid tho, because it means they won’t have any stock in the company which obviously is a way different asset wealth management wise than a big salary. Anyway we shouldn’t feel bad for them but perhaps grateful for this move.
I really liked what Proton done so far: to have a full suite of products which are privacy oriented.
I might end up moving there from my current diverse setup across multiple providers.
As someone who is in Proton’s ecosystem, I can say that it’s pretty sweet.
These “for-profit company owned by a charity” setups have seemingly (to me at least) become more common in recent years.
In general, it can work quite well. The largest shareholder of Proton is now a charity, which means that, at least in theory, the values of the charity should take priority over profit (although as they mention, profit-seeking is still important).
For Proton users, this doesn’t mean much in the short-term, except it does mean that the company is safe from profit-seeking takeover in the vast majority of scenarios. This organization structure helps ensure that the foundation’s values are upheld in perpetuity.
Especially in Switzerland. Most famous example is Rolex.
I’m not sure this is the case. The three executives “…jointly endowed the non-profit Proton Foundation through a donation of Proton shares.”
I could be reading this wrong, but nothing says they donated all of their shares. There’s a good chance they all still maintain holdings in Proton AG. The shares that were donated are technically property of the Foundation now, if I’m not mistaken.
My question, given the two entities which now exist, is which of the two do the three executives now work for? Are they employees of the Proton Foundation or Proton AG? Or both?
I like the move, personally. Makes them similar to Mozilla, albeit with the notable distinction that Proton is purportedly profitable and self-sustaining (which they point out).
Assuming they work for both yes. But you are right it doesn’t mean they have up all. Should be possible to find that tho. I believe even in Switzerland that data is public;)
I’d imagine they’re employees of the company, and the foundation has 0 employees, only board members (who are typically uncompensated). Not that it probably really matters in the grand scheme of things.
Similarly at Mozilla, Mozilla Corporation has like ~1,000 employees, whereas Mozilla Foundation only has ~80. And even the Mozilla Foundation does a lot more things than what the Proton Foundation is doing so far. Not sure why the Proton Foundation would really need employees at all, except possibly some accountants/lawyers, and maybe some people handling grants if they’re going to get serious about their new grant-making mission.
To play devil’s advocate, this sort of setup does have a history of not working too well too. Mozilla is hardly a shining example of a well managed organization unfortunately, and we all saw how OpenAI’s foundation/board was hijacked and basically made irrelevant by OpenAI the company & Sam Altman a few months ago.
These are great news! Seems they are really showing that they care about this and are in it for the long run.
Home assistant also created a non-profit foundation a few month ago.
By tranafering their open source product to the foundation, they would prevent any aggresive takeover or changing priorities of the current owner. The foundation has a set of core values that needs to be respected and as the owner, there is no way around it.
Btw I haven’t seen any posts about home assistant, but I still think it fits here. Its an home automation platform that is free and open source. Home assistant allows you to uses your devices privately at home without requiring a manufacturer cloud connection. With local devices, you’re not sharing data with the manufwcturers that will be used to build a profile and sell it. You’re also not at risk of having your paid devices turned off if the manufacturer goes bankrupt, or is they start charging a subscription , reduce the feature of their product or disable them to force you to buy a new one.
Perhaps I should post a new topic about it to present it.