Just sitting here waiting on the peeps who know more about stuff to chime in on this, cause it sounds awesome. But I’ve been burned before so I’m hesitant
Seems solid.
It doesn’t change a ton, but the point was basically them putting their money where their mouth is and saying “now we can’t sell out like everything else.”
If you liked them before, this is great. It means google or whoever literally can’t buy them out, it’s not about the money. If you were iffy already because they’re not FOSS or whatever other reason, this doesn’t change that, either, for better or worse
What is this buying out talked about something not escapable if not some legal reorganization is made? It has been being talked about other companies, too, and it sounds like if you have a form of a company, you can’t legally refuse monetary offers from someone to buy your company.
Is there such a legal mechanism that forces an owner to sell out if an offer is made, or is this more about proofing a company against CEO/shareholder personal sell out decision?
A company with a public offering basically cannot refuse a large enough buyout because with a public offering comes a financial responsibility to the shareholders. Public stock is a contract saying give me money and I’ll do my best to make you money back, and it’s very legally binding.
You can avoid this by never going public, but that also means you basically don’t get big investors for expanding what you can offer. A public offering involves losing some of your rights as owner for cash.
When the legal goal becomes “money above all else”, it is hard to justify NOT selling all the data and violating the trust of your customers for money, customer loyalty has to be monetizable and also worth more.
Proton has given a majority share to a nonprofit with a legal requirement to uphold the current values, not make money. This means that the remaining ownership can be sold to whoever, the only way anything gets done is if this foundation agrees. It prevents everything associated with a legal financial responsibility to make money, but still allows the business to do business things and make money, which seems to be proton’s founder’s belief, that the software should be sold to be sustainable.
I think a publicly traded company works that way as they have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders to make money, but the non-profit (controlling) part of proton has no such duty as their primary directive is their mission. They said I’m mostly talking out of my ass so I certainly could be wrong
Maybe the founders can’t sell out anymore, but looking at what Raspberrypi just did the company can still end up partially on the stock market.
It’s a bit different because of the stated values though.
Raspberry pi’s foundation is focused on making computers available broadly, while this new organization is focused on making privacy widely accessible.
While both can be commercialized, the pi’s foundation has no fundamental problems with selling out privacy or focusing on money to achieve those goals. Proton would have a much harder time arguing that profiting from sale.of private data supports privacy.
This is relevant because it means even if the remaining shares end up on the stock market, the foundation can use its majority ownership to veto any privacy concerns.
Time will tell. I could also have missed something
Seems legit. Going towards a better business model. Don’t know if anything stops them going from non-profit to profit as OpenAI did buy at least their movinf the other way now with intent towards the opposite.
I’ll keep using their service at least.
Seems like all that will change is the fact that all profits made will be reinvested in the company, im not an expert though, so i may be wrong
