> the possibility that Daniel and I are able to keep our personal opinions separate from the mission of our company
This isn't about opinions. Very large political financing is not a mere opinion. It has a much larger material effect.
I don't think it's possible to separate "mission of our company" from "large scale political financing", for purely structural reasons.
I think the legal and fiduciary concept of Conflict of Interest is relevant here, but perhaps only by analogy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest is quite informative.
In some business, political and legal roles, we deem certain structural relations to be a conflict of interest regardless of what people on those roles actually do..
The mere potential for excessive improper influence arising from the structure of their relationships and roles is what creates the deemed conflict.
As the owners of a company making substantial profit like Mullvad, you always had the potential capability to financially influence political outcomes on a scale which most your customers cannot, in ways that may seriously harm some of your customers and to be potentially against the stated mission of your company.
I think the relationship between running a company with an openly advertised public mission, or even an implied mission in the minds of customers, while in another role (wealthy private citizen) being able to make a substantial material action against the same mission, should be recognised as inherently a conflict of interest. But obviously it's one we can't avoid, as long as we allow people to get rich from a mission-driven company.
What we can do, is recognise that if someone actually takes a large material action against the company's mission, then they have gone a step further and demonstrated the conflict of interest.
We generally favour free speech, including political donations. But when the money for very large political financing comes mostly from customers who, by virtue of the advertising and marketing of the company's mission, are led to believe they are supporting the company's mission?
In my view, at that point the customers are being tricked into paying for something while their money is paying for something else which opposes the thing they thought they were funding.
At the least, it should be dealt with in a similar way that conflicts of interest are dealt with when, for example, directing multiple companies: By making sure everyone knows, so other people are able to consent or not on the major conflict issues those other people might have a view on. The analogy for customers is their consent shown by their informed decision to become or remain customers.
In Mullvad's situation, that would mean Mullvad should explain to customers, embedded clearly within it's public marketing of the company missions and values, that one of its current major owners receiving customer funds by way of profit, is the main financier of a political party which sponsors remigration in Sweden. Because that is clearly a thing some customers care about when evaluating whether to pay for Mullvad's services from now on. You know that, I know that, so there's no legitimate excuse for not letting customers who would care know.
Then, as you said, customers will be free to choose.
This isn't about opinions. Very large political financing is not a mere opinion. It has a much larger material effect.
I don't think it's possible to separate "mission of our company" from "large scale political financing", for purely structural reasons.
I think the legal and fiduciary concept of Conflict of Interest is relevant here, but perhaps only by analogy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest is quite informative.
In some business, political and legal roles, we deem certain structural relations to be a conflict of interest regardless of what people on those roles actually do..
The mere potential for excessive improper influence arising from the structure of their relationships and roles is what creates the deemed conflict.
As the owners of a company making substantial profit like Mullvad, you always had the potential capability to financially influence political outcomes on a scale which most your customers cannot, in ways that may seriously harm some of your customers and to be potentially against the stated mission of your company.
I think the relationship between running a company with an openly advertised public mission, or even an implied mission in the minds of customers, while in another role (wealthy private citizen) being able to make a substantial material action against the same mission, should be recognised as inherently a conflict of interest. But obviously it's one we can't avoid, as long as we allow people to get rich from a mission-driven company.
What we can do, is recognise that if someone actually takes a large material action against the company's mission, then they have gone a step further and demonstrated the conflict of interest.
We generally favour free speech, including political donations. But when the money for very large political financing comes mostly from customers who, by virtue of the advertising and marketing of the company's mission, are led to believe they are supporting the company's mission?
In my view, at that point the customers are being tricked into paying for something while their money is paying for something else which opposes the thing they thought they were funding.
At the least, it should be dealt with in a similar way that conflicts of interest are dealt with when, for example, directing multiple companies: By making sure everyone knows, so other people are able to consent or not on the major conflict issues those other people might have a view on. The analogy for customers is their consent shown by their informed decision to become or remain customers.
In Mullvad's situation, that would mean Mullvad should explain to customers, embedded clearly within it's public marketing of the company missions and values, that one of its current major owners receiving customer funds by way of profit, is the main financier of a political party which sponsors remigration in Sweden. Because that is clearly a thing some customers care about when evaluating whether to pay for Mullvad's services from now on. You know that, I know that, so there's no legitimate excuse for not letting customers who would care know.
Then, as you said, customers will be free to choose.
Knowledgable & helpful person, available for hire :-)
I'm looking for more work, ideally on a consulting / freelance / part-time basis.
LinkedIn is better than email to make first contact if you'd like to talk, whether for work or just chat about something you liked here on HN! (I often miss interesting one-off mails among the deluge, and don't check it every day.)
I work 80% time at a funded stealth startup as hands-on tech lead, with zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptography, Bluetooth low energy (BLE), and peer-to-peer distributed systems, linking physical devices as well as the usual web stack. Can't say more, but it is intended to become open source. This a really fun and challenging project, with a great team! (It's not on my LinkedIn - stealth).
With my remaining 20% I am currently available and looking for software dev and/or tech leadership and/or business strategy consulting.
I'm versatile but develop mostly low-level or "system" software in C, C++, Go, Rust and Nim, with Linux as my main OS (but MacOS and Windows also). I have about 30 years professional dev experience over a wide range of systems, from embedded to supercomputers, Linux kernel, database engines, as well as GUIs, the web, and even games. Good at performance optimisation, debugging. Also good math & physics.
I've worked as an Ethereum core dev (EVM), so I know that environment well, especially improving EVM database speed, which is a critical factor! Currently my rabbit holes are ZK cryptography speed optimisation, and a novel fast database engine (neither B-tree nor LSM-tree, but with characteristics of both).
(ZK = zero-knowlege cryptography).