1y ago

Proton picks up Standard Notes to deepen its pro-privacy portfolio

techcrunch.com

Proton picks up Standard Notes to deepen its pro-privacy portfolio | TechCrunch

Free and Open Source Software @beehaw.org

Daryl Sun @beehaw.org

1y ago

Proton picks up Standard Notes to deepen its pro-privacy portfolio

techcrunch.com /2024/04/10/proton-standard-notes/

59 comments

I was really dissatisfied that notes are always somehow weirdly shared with a propriatary backend. There is jtx Board which uses your CalDAV calendar (Nextcloud, Radicale, etc.) as a backend which is really cool. The UI is also OK, but there seems to be no (Linux) desktop app for that.
So I started https://github.com/jeena/JNotes because I was curious about developing for GNOME anyway. It's going very slowly - because I am a stay at home dad with a one year old who demands all my attention :D - but it's going forward, but I guess it'll take another year before it's usable ^^.
Actually I was hoping that there would be more notes apps using standard backends like CalDAV or IMAP, but it's almost impossible to find something, everyone seems to want to implement their own backend and then charge for the synchronization.
- None of those standards are e2e
  
  As long as you host it yourself it doesn't matter.
So... this was the plan of the Standard Notes guys all along? Now it makes sense why they never made open-source and self-hosting a true priority.
Let's see what Proton does with this, but I personally believe they'll just integrate it in Proton and further close things even more. The current subscription-based model, docker container and whatnot might disappear as well. Proton is a greedy company that doesn't like interoperability and likes to add features designed in a way to keep people locked their Web UI and applications.
Standard Notes for self-hosting was already mostly dead due to the obnoxious subscription price, but it is a well designed App with good cross-platform support and I just wish the Joplin guy would take a clue on how to design UIs from them instead of whatever they're doing now that is ugly and barely usable.
- Doesn't proton open source everything they do? Iirc, proton mail, calendar, vpn, drive, and simplelogin are open source under GPL v3 on github.
  
  Yes the clients are open source but the server part is closed and it's a big missing part
  Now, better to be 50% oss than 0%, but it's not a community effort. Most commits are done behind the scenes and then published when app is released. This causes most pull releases to be rejected as the problem was already fixed internally months before. It's more like "source available"
  
  There’s no vendor lock in until you realize your emails are essentially hostage of their apps and a bridge that may be shutdown at any point. If you can’t simply setup a regular email client then there’s vendor lock in, not even Microsoft does that.
good for them, love to see proton continuing there growth I pay for protonmail plus and definitely am happy to do so, for actual private email
- I pay for the same but may go down to their free tier. After a purge of email and emails with larger attachments I'm down to less than 500mb. The only thing I dislike on the free tier is their automated signature to advertise proton. I hardly ever send emails though so not too much of an issue.
  
  Keep paying so some other poor fuck has a free vpn and e-mail
  
  honestly half the reason I pay is mainly just to support proton. But I do also like having the ability for the more than 1 Email
Proton's alternative to Google Docs getting closer? 👀
- It will really hard or impossible to reach the level of development that ms and google have in their cloud collaborative products. They don’t have the resources like the mentioned two monsters.
  
  A single coder made photopea which is near feature parity of photoshop. I think the Proton team can figure out a docs suite
Not surprising. Proton seems to be exploiting the niche of “privacy” . I haven’t seen anything to the contrary other than turning over metadata due to court order.
- exploiting
  Yes, that's the right word for it. :)
  
  True Swiss style
I feel so wise now for having landed as an user of both independently
Ahhhh!!!!
I literally, just purchased a subscription to Joplin Cloud! I already pay for Proton Unlimited and was tossing up between Joplin and Standard Notes.
What a bummer... I bet Proton adds this as an additional service to Proton Unlimited.
- It'll probably take time though until it's available
Mixed feelings on this, as a user of simplelogin, proton and standard notes as individual services for the last 4+ years I love them all, and trust proton.
However one of the key reasons for choosing those services was they were isolated, and without risk of vendor lock in or single points of failure... Depending how this goes it could be great, I just hope they don't force/push integration with proton too much. Maybe I'm just being a FUD pusher. Certainly equally a chance this is great for both proton and StandardNotes. SN has lacked development on a fair few plugins recently so hopefully this aids that.
- I appreciate this perspective and that was also my immediate reaction. Then I realized, as long as I can easily export my data and move elsewhere, I shouldn’t be too concerned.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a press release announcing the move, Proton emphasized the pair’s “shared values,” including the use of E2EE; a commitment to open-source technology; and how neither has relied upon venture capital to drive growth.
This includes building on its first acquisition — email alias startup SimpleLogin, which it acquired in 2022 — as well as developing and launching fully fledged password manager app Proton Pass in June.
So the company is evidently not allergic to user acquisition and other consolidation-based growth opportunities where it sees enough philosophical overlap plus the chance to deepen its technical bank.
“The deal is a strategic decision designed to benefit users by bringing to market secure, easy to use, private products that anyone can access,” Proton wrote.
“Standard Notes and Proton engineers will begin working together immediately to ensure their combined skills and experience bear fruit for users as soon as possible.”
Asked about the sustainability of pro-privacy business models that don’t rely on exploitation of user data — when so much of mainstream tech still continues to roll in the opposite, data-mining direction — Yen emphasized the need for long-term thinking by privacy startups.
The original article contains 967 words, the summary contains 190 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Rip. Time to delete all my standard notes.
- Seriously curious: why is that?
  
  I don't trust Proton at all, and Obsidian is a nicer experience for this anyway. I had a ton of old notes, and now that a new owner is taking them all, it's time for me to delete my account and move on.
- why? as a 5 years subscriber I am fine with that and they said they don't want to mess with it and as long as Proton make it better. I am fine though.
I don't trust Proton. Avoid it at all costs, they're expanding and want money. Your data is at risk!
- How is a company expected to operate without money?
  
  Genuinely. Proton expanding is a good thing in my eyes at least in this stage. They offer their services at a pretty hefty, but reasonable price compared to others, and don't have a free offering for certain things they run. Their incentive to operate is continuing what they were built on and getting better.

59 comments