What is everyone’s thoughts on this?
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It’s great they are offereing alternative, people like it. On the other hand, many are dissapointed they didn’t credit FOSS projects their services rely on (Riot, K-9 mail, Mastodon, openVPN…), like e.g. Disroot did (does)
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Yeah, also when you think about it, there are already tons of servers you can use with these apps that are free, and the “Librem TunnelTM” is just a glorified OpenVPN app connecting to a very sketchy VPN provider (private internet access). They just let you pay money for apps and services that users can already have for free, but without crediting the original work.
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They do mention the services they are using under the “Technical Specifications” section.
- Librem Mail – Standard SMTP/IMAP/POP MTA, with OpenPGP
- Librem Tunnel – OpenVPN
- Librem Chat – Matrix, XMPP (coming soon)
- Librem Social – ActivityPub
I do agree, not happy about them using a sketchy VPN provider.
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Funny that you should call Private Internet Access “sketchy,” as I know some people who are unconditionally loyal to it. I have yet to use a commercial VPN service.
Well its mostly that PIA is known for leading the charge with smear campaigns against other VPN providers, and advertise in their own service with it. When a company relies on those kind of marketing tactics, it doesn’t exactly spike my confidence in a companies ethical standards and trustworthiness. Also it is based in the USA which we at Privacytools.io don’t trust: https://www.privacytools.io/providers/vpn/
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Sadly, the engineering department usually learns of the PR / Sales activities until “later” (i.e. too late) and seldom reacts afterwards (with rare but notable exceptions, many we never even become aware of until much later)