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Comment by ajvs | Hacker News Reader

Why is the EU investing in closed-source software? The server, mobile apps and ProtonMail Bridge are all proprietary. It's not as bad as investing in Microsoft Office but this decision doesn't make sense when they could just as easily fund fully open-source email solutions like Mail-in-a-box, iRedMail, Mailcow etc. I don't think they researched ProtonMail as thoroughly as they did the other open-source software they've invested in like 7-Zip, Apache Tomcat, Drupal, Filezilla, VLC, KeePass, Notepad++.

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The point of this grant is not to help software.

The point is to help a service gain market shares and displace at least a little Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook, and limit the inpact of having only US companies in that field.

Email is a bit overlooked, but it's huge source of information, easy to obtain (with the appropriate laws), and quite good in term of quality. It renders email strategic.

With a grant to an oss project, it's not achieving directly this goal. And the bettering of the oss ecosystem is not likely to help an alternative service hugely.

Lastly, a mail server is probably one of the most annoying common piece of infrastructure to deploy. To the point that even people knowing how don't even bother.

As the article states, this money is to help them become more competitive in a landscape where there are a few large players that everyone goes to. The EU is very interested in fighting monopoly and cartel-like behavior, so this investment or similar ones shouldn't really be compared to investments into open source software, as they are funding what seems to be a SaaS offering and not just a desktop app.

Why? Because these are research grants for companies doing research of any kind or developing new products, regardless of the type of output[1]. Their objective is to help companies grow through this kind of project-oriented funding, their are not investing in a specific product for... I don't know, the common good. But sure, opensource grants would be a nice thing too.

European HNers with an established company, you should look into this, getting a grant is not as hard as it seems and there are companies that can help you prepare your proposal (even for free, check you local government programs)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framework_Programmes_for_Resea...

Although I don't know the details, I agree grants should be for open source software. For the record OpenPGP.js is largely developed by ProtonMail. Their frontend is also open source.

Because for non-zealots something being open-source isn't the one single yardstick for decision making. Something can be useful and worthy of investing and be closed-source.

Microsoft Windows is surely useful. It doesn't mean that we want taxpayer money to subsidize it.

If microsoft went bankrupt, we surely would want to support windows in some way.

Well the only way I would support it would be to purchase the code and make it open source :)

If Windows would then become free (as it is paid for by the taxpayer then), and preferably open-source, then absolutely. MS is not going bankrupt any time soon though.

Why not ? Microsoft is a big company and that come with jobs and revenues that can be taxed.

Well, from a European perspective the jobs and taxes are all abroad. I think that some politicians don't like that very much.

I would point out though that this specific grant is made under the SME Instrument, specifically focused at helping SMEs bring new products to market.

Well, under various parts of Horizon 2020 there are grants available for a lot of different projects.

Looks like they've been awarded the funds under the SME instrument phase 2, which is about providing grant funding for a variety of innovative business ideas, and generally intended to help existing businesses bring new products to market. You can see the exact details of the Proton project here: https://sme.easme-web.eu/?b=911075023

The point is, there's nothing specifically wrong about offering grants to companies who develop closed-source software, in the same way there's nothing wrong with offering grants to other companies who don't produce software at all. My company—building a hardware project—has also just been awarded funding under the same programme (I can reassure you that they did indeed research throughly!). Much of the business case for grant investments is the idea that offering funding to SMEs can be an overall economic benefit if it allows them to produce products or services that they wouldn't otherwise be able to offer. Given the rather more cautious private funding environment in Europe, it can be hard to otherwise come by some of these opportunities.

That's not to say that funding for open-source projects isn't a great thing, and I hope more of that continues to be made. The grants you refer to were made as part of FOSSA I think? It's done with different intent, but I reckon both are valuable.

The EU already invests in closed-source software with grants. I don't like it, but there are worse choices than ProtonMail.

I'm not sure it's a good idea, I've seen some other software companies they support and concluded it was a gravy train for those businesses.

If they are worried about the dominance of Google et all then they could look at taxes and regulatory changes to shift the balance.

Microsoft office is far and ahead the best document system- you probably use open source and standards compliant gdocs?

Bringing it up in comparison for no reason and just general being hostile to MS is the reason MS doesn't listen to non-enterprise feedback. They have their faults but people like you are the ones who don't let them improve. For you, it's not about technology- its about your personal grudges.

No, I use LibreOffice which is an open-source solution that has most of the same feature set. I simply don't believe nations should have to use proprietary solutions for something as simple as documents and taxpayers be forced to fund it when there are viable alternatives.

That being said Outlook would have probably been a better comparison and the statement would have lost no impact, Microsoft is just the easiest proprietary software giant to point at.

I've been using libreoffice since +10 years exclusively. Despite using protonmail myself if you look at it critically through a FOSS (libre) perspective it's one of the worst email platforms around which mainly benefits from the (incorrect) assumption that hosting in Switzerland is somehow safer than hosting anywhere else. They will happily comply with any court order even (or especially) from the US.

And it's not that the founders chose a Swiss structure because they were themselves Swiss. Even the product were hypothetically bug-free and fully FOSS ... the marketing (with its mountains in the background and "Secure Email Based in Switzerland" tagline) plays to the sentiment that a Swiss jurisdiction makes Protonmail a safer bet than other location is itself "snakeoil" ... if I think about this for too long I might even wonder about their much more relevant claims regarding security & actual code implementation.

I just couldn't agree more with it. It's a trend now, people think that hosting in Switzerland somehow more secure than anywhere else due to their data protection laws. Which is not always true, and what you really get(from experience) pretty awful customer support in comparison to other hosting providers or co-lo services.

"They will happily comply with any court order even (or especially) from the US."

Isn't it more true of e.g., German-based companies and less true of Swiss-based ones?

there is no difference afaik. the only difference is in perception which stems from the historical promise of banking secrecy.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-secrecy/era-of-bank...

I think, there is because Switzerland is not in the NATO and generally can't be that easily convinced to comply with anything.

Switzerland is NOT a more secure location for data hosting / processing than many other countries.

Switzerland's data protection laws are way behind the GDPR. Switzerland is struggling to adapt its data protection laws to keep its adequacy status with the EU. It has still not signed Convention 108.

Switzerland's surveillance system is growing and growing. The latest revision of the relevant law was targeted at services like ProtonMail and ProtonVPN (Federal Act on the Surveillance of Post and Telecommunications). Switzerland's federal secret service has got almost unlimited power without any meaningful control and is known as a close partner of the US (thanks to Snowden leaks). Every communication in Switzerland is under mass surveillance 24/7, the metadata is stored for at least six months (civil security authorities) or longer (secret services). Switzerland's armed forces work in close cooperation with NATO.

I am actually wondering whether Proton is a honeypot.

Actually, almost everything you wrote is untrue. If you actually read the text of the Federal Act on the Surveillance of Post and Telecommunications (which is publicly available in French and German), you will see that instead of targeting ProtonMail and ProtonVPN, the legislation actually does the opposite, and explicitly exempts all but the largest telcos.

You don't have to take our word for this, it's actually in the text of the law.

Also, if you read the actual text of the US/Switzerland MLAT (mutual lateral assistance treaty), or the text of the Swiss Data Protection Act, you will see that "unlimited power without any meaningful control" is also patently untrue, and there are many layers of control and an explicit need to satisfy the requirements of Swiss privacy laws, even on cases originating from the US.

It's not a personal grudge to be against forcing proprietary formats instead of an open, standardized format for no reason other than keeping a foothold over competitors and monopolizing the market. If Office used standardized formats, compatibility between alternative office software would never have been an issue, and the end-user would be none the wiser.

> Bringing it up in comparison for no reason and just general being hostile to MS is the reason MS doesn't listen to non-enterprise feedback

Are they really so shallow?

If they don't listen to non-enterprise feedback, that can only be because they don't give a fuck due to them having a monopoly.

Or ... nobody listens to a dog that barks constantly? Is it really that hard to comprehend?

Because that's not how companies operate.

Also blaming people on the Internet for Microsoft not listening is extremely rude.

But even if it were true, how is it any of our concern? Personally I couldn't care less about the way Microsoft chooses to conduct its business.

Kopano and Kolab are open source mail+ solutions from the EU. I'd be interested to know if they applied for EU funding and whether they received it.

Because it works and isn't a usability nightmare like most everything else you mentioned.

This. Even if it was fully open source, the EU should not decide which project live or die.

It's not only about being closed source. They are also not in the EU, and they are a for-profit (an Aktiengesellschaft).

The only reason I don't use them is because to get the full experience (IMAP, especially) I need to pay them... Now I have to pay them, and I don't even get to enjoy the product. Thanks EU! :P

You might not know this, but Switzerland actually pays more money into the EU than it gets from the EU, so not only are EU citizens like yourself not paying for this, you are actually receiving Swiss taxpayer money.

So it's actually the Swiss public footing the bill for your private software company. Doesn't make it any less gross. The EU really dropped the ball here.

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