Legitimately, the degree to which proton advertises, the sheer amount of blog spam and such, made me very, very resistant to it. I really don't care how private it all is or how well it works, I have spent enough time on the internet and engaged with enough small tech company services to recognize a fierce push for growth, and experience has taught me to avoid a for-profit company that sells to you that hard. One day the growth will stop, and the cannibalizing begins.
But a move to a non-profit model is, at least theoretically, a move in the right direction. I'm more willing to engage.
I still don't trust that they won't change their mind down the road, but it's a start.
And the point about OpenAI is moot because being non-profit doesn't make the actual purpose of the company any less shitty. Especially when Microsoft was feeding it money for the purpose of harvesting what they would create. They still had shitty motives and created a tool that is very ethically "questionable" at best, and that was true from the very beginning.The fact their ethics team was gutted the moment they tried to exercise their purpose tells you everything.
The non-profit company created a tool that will be used primarily by for-profit companies and hurt individuals. The moniker barely applies.