this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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What "Anti-features" does proton VPN have?
Accoding to F-Droid build service, it says ProtonVPN depends entirely on non-free network services, which means:
"This Anti-Feature is applied to apps that promote or depend entirely on a Non-Free network service which is impossible, or not easy to replace. Replacement requires changes to the app or service. This antifeature would not apply, if there is a simple configuration option that allows pointing the app to a running instance of an alternative, publicly available, self-hostable, free software server solution."
Compared to RiseUpVPN source code which has zero anti-features
So the issue is that you can't point it to your own VPN server( or another VPN server ) and only use protonvpn servers?
Or am I misinterpreting this?
It's the combination of requiring Proton servers and the fact that that there is no public release of server source code or specifying which open source software runs on Proton servers, amount to a type of vender lock-in
RiseUpVPN uses OpenVPN from Bitmask so everybody can duplicate the service using their own custom build version of OpenVPN to connect to RiseUp servers so their server's code is publicly accessible.
you can do this with proton servers as well. they offer openvpn and wireguard. iirc, the "non-free services" is because the "Alternate routing" feature in proton apps routes over Google servers. if you disable this option it goes directly to their servers.