These are my thoughts on the matter:
I applaud the employees that pushed back and have spoken out. You guys/gals Rock!! Thank you so dang much!!!
To Andy Yen, you obviously have no flipping clue who your actual customers are. Your views are incompatible with what I thought Proton was. I don't care how inconsequential of a decision you thought it was. That attitude over anything, especially security!?, is the exact opposite of what I thought Proton was when I signed up in 2020. I especially did not expect something like this when I became a buisness level subscriber in 2022. For me to continue using the services of Proton, you need to resign from Proton in any and all capacity.
Furthermore to Proton as an entity. Any and all who shared in this kind of mentality and disregard needs to be scrutinized and removed if necessary. Don't be crazy about it, but you know who NEEDS to go I think.
Look, we all are seeing that AI is here to stay. And it has gotten incredible at coding if I am to believe what I have read. The world is abruptly changing, but that is why now more that ever we need you to move as securely as you possibly can. Yes that still means using every tool at your disposal, but with the utmost concern and scrutiny supporting security and privacy. Even the crazy conspiracy/science fiction would never happen stuff, we're counting on you guys not being susceptible to it. We want privacy and security, not features and shinn-shi-curity.
If that is not the company Proton is striving to be, I will be taking my business elsewhere. I expect many others will be doing so as well. Imagine the fash.crud on top of all this. Don't know why I was sticking around truthfully.
Outside of the fediverse and the magazines reporting on this, I doubt it will impact Proton that much. If they actually make the CEO step down, they'd need someone with a focus on community and Doing The Right Thing, whatever that means in practice. Maybe a social contract, Debian style?
I'd argue these are the places Proton subscribers found out about Proton and became convinced to trust it.
If the board acts swiftly and decisively with absolute transparency this could be just a "small" bump to a healthier and more trust worthy company on the other side. There can't be any more BS from them though. Are they a privacy company or a profit company? They need to pick now and fucking prove it if they want to be a security company.
I also see a possible path forward, this "bump" being what sets the course. I am a paying Proton subscriber, and the important thing for me is how this gets resolved. What they learn. If they say "this or that feature won't be implemented any time soon, we're going to focus on QA and cleaning up our repos for a while" then that is exactly the type of thing that I'm willing to pay for, for example.
This is the reason we shouldn't have bosses. If 99% oft a company disagrees with a tactic that the CEO wants, one person can destroy everything. It's statistically speaking likely a more narcisstic/psychopathic person at the top.
We need workers cooperatives instead, where decisions are met based on consensus of employees