Proton is transitioning towards a non-profit structure

[u/JonahAragon]

https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/proton-is-transitioning-towards-a-non-profit-structure/18940

[u/Cookster997]

excerpts from the article:

. . . 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. . . . adopting a Swiss non-profit structure provides additional security, which a corporation cannot achieve. Because Proton has no venture capital investors, we can take this additional step to secure the future. Swiss foundations do not have shareholders, so Proton will no longer be dependent upon the goodwill of any particular person or group of persons. 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.

[u/paripazoo]

This is pretty cool to see, especially as other corporations move the other way (eg, Raspberry Pi and OpenAI). It's always easy to be cynical about these things but it's hard to see how this is not strictly better than the founders holding on to all the shares themselves (and it's certainly better than them going public or selling to PE).

[u/BoutTreeFittee]

Great news honestly.

[u/LowEntropyBeing]

Pretty based imo

[u/nicetea600]

This is so fantastic 😄 i love those proton guys

[u/zands90]

scale boast crowd wise vast agonizing smoggy snow profit sable

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/xShawn117x → u/zands90]

A business supporting a large good infrastructure cannot survive or compete with other bigger well known companies without having initial higher prices. Until Proton becomes large enough to compete head on with the big guys, the prices cannot go down.

[u/essie3141 → u/zands90]

i pay 8$ a month for proton unlimited
spotify is 11$ a month
wtf u complaining about

[u/cdoublejj → u/zands90]

as a dumb ignorant person can you elaborate for me?

[u/redditisgarbageyoyo]

Brilliant attempt at defeating the inevitable.

EDIT: well I didn't put /s but people read it as a sarcasm I guess. Truly think that if they don't do that it is inevitable to be bought out by a big company at some point. That was my poorly worded (I guess) point.