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Privacy focused platform Skiff is joining Notion, Skiff to be sunset

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Re: Privacy focused platform Skiff is joining Notion, Skiff to be sunset

#41
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair, although IMO it's additionally fair to be skeptical of making a long-term commitment to products/services that aren't funded in ways that permit long-term product planning and reasonably-paced development based on that plan.

I guess we all make our own risk calculations, but if it is truly long term, 5+ years then a SaaS is a risk regardless of funding. Especially for my personal life where long term really means long term, self-hosted is the only safe option. As an employee it's a toss up on whether your employer or your SaaS dependency changes course first. So a shorter term engagement is basically guaranteed and it doesn't matter that…

So 5+ years is now considered long term?

I still remember when Optical CD claiming 30+ years lifetime -- they failed, but they tried

life insurance policy exists too

Re: Privacy focused platform Skiff is joining Notion, Skiff to be sunset

#42
post #3
post #2

https://skiff.com/data-migration I’m really upset about this, I was about to go all in on Skiff after being burnt by ProtonMail. Glad I didn’t. Feel really bad for those who did.

I literally just migrated from Proton yesterday. Oh well, Tuta now i guess...

Was it an aspect of Proton that made you switch? Seeing it get mentioned negatively all over this comment section is making me a little concerned.

Re: Privacy focused platform Skiff is joining Notion, Skiff to be sunset

#44

congrats to the team! a little sad at the shutdown however, one of the few privacy focused products with good design and attention to detail

makes me wonder if "users don't care about privacy" is more true than i thought

Could also be that privacy-conscious users are not easy to make money from with a free service. Ten gigs of email is a lot of email. I wonder what the percentage of paying users was.

Re: Privacy focused platform Skiff is joining Notion, Skiff to be sunset

#45
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Four people mentioned proton in this thread without any indication of what happened lol

Proton accidentally all the emails. [sorry]

Are you suggesting they had a data loss? Or is this a quip?

Re: Privacy focused platform Skiff is joining Notion, Skiff to be sunset

#47
post #40

Man. In addition to Skiff users, I feel really bad for the people working there, too. Imagine spending years of your life on one product, working hard every day to make it as good as it can be... all for it just to go “poof” one day so some executives and investors can get rich. Might have been the plan all along, even. Sad

You get used to it if you work long enough in the industry. I've had multiple products go poof over the years. Best to try not to let it affect you emotionally. Part of maintaining a healthy work/life balance to be able to keep things separated.

True. It still hurts though. I _want_ to care. I do my best work, with least effort, when I'm solving a real problem with people I care about.

I enjoy thinking back about stuff I made, knowing it's out there doing its job.

I can separate out my work (which, lest we forget, is the majority of my waking hours, because of the reality of working a full time job) but that's not particularly good for my mental health either. It's part of the reason I am looking to branch out my career into a different, perhaps more durable sphere.

All I'm saying is, if it's affecting you, changing aspects about your career is valid. Just getting used to it doesn't work for me, despite it being fine for others.

Re: Privacy focused platform Skiff is joining Notion, Skiff to be sunset

#48

They’re just closing it, wow. Someone had recommended me Skiff, but I stayed away from it and opted for Proton, given that they have been around for a while and Skiff smelled like VC money too much. I guess it was the right choice. At this point, a criteria I try to follow when I have to choose whether or not to rely on a tool is: is it funded by VC? If so, steer clear.

That's a similar line of thought I followed when migrating away from Gmail last year.

I was considering Skiff or Fastmail. Skiff was just over a year old with over $10 million in VC funding. Fastmail is 20+ years old and is funded by their own subscription fees.

I was concerned Skiff would be looking for a buyer eventually and things would change for the worse. Definitely didn't expect a full shutdown though.

Re: Privacy focused platform Skiff is joining Notion, Skiff to be sunset

#49
Wish the team well, scrambling to get my mail out of the service now. Heads up to folks trying to bring their mail to Proton: the ProtonMail Import-Export tool can't seem to bring in any mail from the Skiff MBOX export.

Glancing at the file, it appears to be an original MBOX format export, that is "From " with no quoting, etc. That's rough.

Re: Privacy focused platform Skiff is joining Notion, Skiff to be sunset

#50
And...this is why E2E encryption isn't enough to protect your data. E2E encryption + self-hosting + user-controlled keys is the way. For docs & stuff switched to Anytype a while ago, I think there are others that at least offer encryption + self-hosting: Affine, Joplin, Obsidian.
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