Proton Launches Privacy-Focused Alternative To Google Docs (theverge.com) 32
Proton, the privacy-focused technology company, has launched Proton Docs, a new document editing tool that bears a striking resemblance to Google Docs. The service, launched as part of Proton Drive, offers features such as rich text editing, real-time collaboration, and multimedia support.
No spreadsheets? (Score:2)
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You know that they will release a Spreadsheets in couple of weeks.. Just wait.
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I don't think so. I once worked on the spreadsheet team of a (now defunct) Google Docs competitor. Spreadsheets are NOT easy, and our company even started with third-party source code. There's a reason only the biggest companies have spreadsheet tools that are worth using.
Re:No spreadsheets? [Can't budget itself?] (Score:2)
This time a concurrence with the FP, but "spreadsheets" actually opens up the angle I was interested in. Unless there is a viable financial model, you can't use this for anything serious because Proton and the software might go away.
I still think about cost-recovery via a CSB (Charity Share Brokerage) where the pre-paid future could be made concrete by how many years of future support have been funded, but I'm sure that's not the only way it could work. How about an advertising-based model where you would a
Steam? (Score:1)
Re:Steam? (Score:5, Funny)
I was reading your comment in the context of an article about a well-known privacy email service, trying to work out what does it have with me running Stirling and Watt engines.
There are too many things called steam. Can't people think of original names?
Re: Steam? (Score:2)
And what is Thomas Newcomen, chopped liver?
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There are too many things called proton. Can't people think of original names?
- 1917-1920: subatomic particle named by Ernest Rutherford, theorized in 1815 by William Prout, observed as H+ by Eugen Goldstein in 1886
- 1964: Chinese hi-fi importer/manufacturer
- 1965: Soviet rocket & satellite
- 1980: Brazilian car manufacturer
- 1983: Malaysian automobile
- 1986: Malaysian football team
- 1986: Dutch chemistry student association
- 1995: Austrian mass spectrometer
- 1995: Belgian electronic payment card
- 1996: German auto racing team
- 2001: Greek bank
- 2002: Electronic music i
Proton API needed (Score:2)
They urgently need an API for their drive. Uploads only vis their web interface makes it completely useless.
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What about the ProtonDrive application on Windows/Linux?
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They have an app for Windows and macOS. Linux version (which I need) doesn't exist. Their API is also not documented. Because of that, other Proton Drive extensions (for example Rclone Proton Drive) are still only in beta versions.
Don't Be Evil (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a paying Proton user. I both don't want this and don't want Proton to do this. I don't want to use Proton for everything for the exact same reasons I don't want to use Google or Microsoft for everything. If everyone right now left Google's stack and went to Proton, within 5 years Proton would be the same as Google.
When Google first started, it's motto was, "Don't be Microsoft." But then they had to get big money investors who really wanted to invest early in Microsoft but couldn't because of our nature as temporal beings. Google then changed its motto to the more well known, "Don't be evil," and became the new Microsoft. Then Google had to pay back huge interest rates on those early, speculative loans. They then changed their motto again and became evil to fully exploit their users in an attempt (that will probably fail) to pay off those loans.
It's the logic of any capitalist system. It is inherently exploitative. It redirects the surpluses generated by other's labor to the owners of the means of production. Any company that tries to expand in a capitalist system will be forced by the structure and logic of capitalist systems to take up such exploitation. It is the basic mechanism for the social reproduction of capitalism.
The profit motive, the fact that any corporation under capitalism must regularly turn a profit or cease as a going concern, is both how capitalism reproduces itself and is also the major weakness of capitalism. It inherently limits the type of corporations that exist to only those that can turn a profit. These are often not the most efficient way of accomplishing a social task but are universally exploitative. That's why the majority of the world's technological infrastructure relies on software (and burgeoning hardware) designed, built, and distributed under an anarcho-syndicalist system. (For the record, anarcho-syndicalism is a type of socialism. It isn't specifically communism because even non-Marxist communism is still collectivist and not syndicalist. I won't go into the difference between the two because it doesn't matter to most people and is immaterial to this discussion.) The Free Software and Open Source Software movements are the foundations of the very technology underpinning global telecommunications infrastructure. Where would we be without the LAMP stack? Go back through the archives of this site and you can find multiple news items about how one weirdo had stopped maintaining a random service or program that they had created and maintained for free for years stopped doing so for whatever reason and multiple multi-billion dollar companies ground to a halt.
That the FS/OSS movement is critical to modern world is beyond argument at this point. The main reason it is indispensable is that what it does could not be accomplished by for-profit entities. Indeed, for-profit entities are actively a drain on most FS/OSS projects. It is the very openness that is created by the lack of a profit motive that has made the movements so intrinsic and indispensable. That openness allows for actual variety to be maintained as the selective pressure of the profit motive drives all capitalist systems towards the market capture of power law distributions [wikipedia.org] and the duopolies, monopolies, and monopsonies. Capitalism does promote competition which does tend to promote fitness. But capitalism also provides a metric (profitability) and a method (bankruptcy/insolvency/market capture) by which said competition ends. When selective pressure is removed, neutral drift can then allow traits to become fixed in a population without selection bias as a guiding, culling, pruning limiter.
*For the record, why Marxism is capitalized and socialism and capitalism are not is that Marx is a proper noun and thus capitalized in English. Only agrammatical weirdos try and use German capitalization in English. Yes, those subtle puns are intended.
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Proton is majority owned by a foundation [proton.me]. This means they have to do what the foundation wants. So, if the board of Proton AG does a Google, the foundation will step in.
The Gold Rule (Score:2)
That's what OpenAI said, too. How'd that work out? Always remember the gold rule. "He who has the gold makes the rules."
Or, more aptly, "Don't fuck with the money."
local installs? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or LibreOffice Online (Score:3)
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Seems like contradictory goals. Locking down documents, and sharing them.
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You mean, like cloud email servers?
The cloud is required, in some form or other, if you want to send something from one person to another, if you aren't in close proximity to each other. This is what ProtonMail does for email. Cloud word processing can do the same thing for documents.
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I don't follow.
Your attached files still go through *cloud* email servers. And those LibreOffice files are certainly not password protected by default. And when they are, it's weak protection, just 64-bit. So sending your attachments through cloud email servers with LibreOffice is LESS secure than sharing a document on Proton's cloud service.
Toasters... (Score:2)
Frakkin' Cylons!
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Good for education (Score:2)
I like it (Score:2)
I played with it a bit, and it could be quite useful. I imagine it is something a lot of customers use, I almost never use it, but when I do, it's one of the last things I still use iCloud for, moved everything to Proton a bit over two years ago.
It even supports some markdown syntax. Headers, lists, and links work, I bet other features do too. It's nice.
Online Docs? (Score:2)
I'm using Microsoft Office 2007 and it's still way more than I need. I certainly don't want to add someone else's cloud crap to the mix. I can do this crazy thing called an attachment to an email when I need to share one of my files. Go figure.
Nextcloud Collabora (Score:3)
For (5?) years now, Nextcloud has Collabora integration. Has spreadsheets, collaborative editing, the lot. Not sure why Proton would write their own editors.
Some host their own, I choose to use a paid hosting with a provider I trust. I mean, who hasn't proven to sell out their customers, right.
So, as for 'zomg a Google Docs alternative!!!!?1!1!' this isn't all that new for those who've been keeping an eye on such. Nice Proton plug though, and indeed, I applaud Proton's efforts.
https://www.collaboraoffice.co... [collaboraoffice.com]
Not secure (Score:2)
If it's in the cloud, it's probably not secure. Why is Proton competing against Google Workspace? The next step is the owners of Proton using all those in-the-cloud documents to train AI.
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You mean, like email servers? Those are generally in the cloud. ProtonMail is the bread and butter of this company. Why wouldn't they be able to do as well with document, as they are able to do with email?
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ProtonMail is unlikely to have the decryption keys to the e-mails it handles. With snail-mail, the courier can see the front and back of the envelope but can't see the message inside. End-to-end encryption, likewise, hides the body (message) of the email from ProtonMail. The problem with software-as-a-service is, one end of the data-stream is a third-party server and thus can decrypt the data and change the data: That's necessary to working as a spreadsheet application or word processor. Which is why m