Bitwarden Switches to Commercial License

Submitted ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Mustachius_Grumpius@thelemmy.club⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

https://community.bitwarden.com/t/published-version-update-in-app-stores/102750

RyanL Bitwarden Employee

Hello everyone!

Starting in the next release, the Bitwarden apps published to the various stores will be the commercially licensed builds. No action is needed, and the apps will work exactly as they do today.

Bitwarden remains committed to open source security and transparency
The GPLv3 OSS licensed version continues to be updated and published on GitHub
All current features are available in both versions
License details are on GitHub
Bitwarden remains committed to a robust, free forever plan for everyone

If you have any questions, please ask them in this thread. Thanks all!

EDIT:

Bitwarden is not going closed-source
You can still fork Bitwarden
No change to self-hosting, the licensing change affects those who are repackaging and reselling Bitwarden
The free plan is here to stay permanently

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Comments

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Dirk@lemmy.ml ⁨26⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
So, Vaultwarden it is?

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Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Well, we all know how this ends…

It’s a really sad day for me, I love Bitwarden, it’s easily the best password manager I’ve used, and I’m in IT, I’ve used a bunch.

Fuck private equity, fuck it to death. But until then, I’ll be moving my test setup for KeyPassXC into production over the coming weeks and months.

I was happily subscribed to Bitwarden for years for my personal account, I moved several people and a whole company onto it’s platform. We had a good run, time to move on.

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- nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  why not vaultwarden?
  
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  - lemmyvore@feddit.nl ⁨26⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    Vaultwarden (and all the client apps) depend on Bitwarden for the API spec. If Bitwarden introduces closed features in the API that Vaultwarden can’t/won’t implement, but the client apps do, it will split the spec. They can also introduce API license keys, which would render Vaultwarden mostly irrelevant.
    
    The only way for Vaultwarden to remain relevant going forward is to own it and split ways from Bitwarden. This would in turn mean that the FOSS client apps have to decide which to support. But I think the ecosystem is going to fragment eventually anyway, so the sooner every app decides which way they want to go, the better.
    
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  - Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    If I’m going to have to host my own infrastructure, I don’t want it tied to Bitwarden, given the new direction of the company.
    
    I fully support Vaultwarden though, and I wish them well.
    
    I’ll be going with KeyPassXC and Syncthing.
    
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  - altphoto@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I’m. Using Vaultgarden but its not clear if the Android app will still be available.
    
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peyotecosmico@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Heh, I’m looking at you to those people that looked at me weird because I told them I was good with Keepass!

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PrinzKasper@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Are they still going to publish the Android client app via their own F-Droid repository?

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irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Sure, it’s no change for self hosters currently, but it’s one more step in moving towards a more closed platform overall. I do hope more FOSS client apps end up getting made sometime soon. I’ve been using Keyguard on Android for some time, which means the recent several breaking changes in the Bitwarden apps to the Vaultwarden backend haven’t hit me as hard, but I do still use the official apps for my laptop and desktop and Keyguard isnt fully FOSS, of course. I’d love to see some forks or brand new apps one of these days that are actually fully FOSS for both mobile and browsers. I’ve thought about doing some myself, but I have too many other projects and I also don’t have a MAC or want to pay the fees to make an iPhone version. And I abandoned my Android Developer account when they started the identity nonsense, so none of my apps are on the official store anymore and Fdroid and similar may not be viable soon, so it would only really be for myself and a few others who use alternate Android OS’s.

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unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Not surprised in the slightest sadly.

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brave_lemmywinks@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
What’s the benefit for them to change the license?

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- Dirk@lemmy.ml ⁨26⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  Money
  
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- talkingpumpkin@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  What differences will exist between the two parallel versions?
  
  Some future components will be published under the commercial license and will exist only in that build. Newly developed features will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis for which license applies to them.
  
  source: the page linked by OP, community.bitwarden.com/t/…/4
  
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possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It is effectively going closed source

Shoot

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- Estebiu@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  How so
  
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  - possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    They don’t make any money off of the open source version. It is just a matter of the before they “discontinue” the open source version and move to source available.
    
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AzuraTheSpellkissed@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
As always, people overreacting in the comments (of the linked forum). So the current plan is that the core remains OSS, but upcoming features are partially not. To me that sounds similar to Chrome’s or VSCode’s approach.

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- Dirk@lemmy.ml ⁨24⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  So it’s open core now? As if this would be any better.
  
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- ture@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Be cautious in such cases is not overreacting. We’ve seen enough open to closed rug pulls in the last years.
  
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  - freely1333@reddthat.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Fucking minIO
    
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- Mustachius_Grumpius@thelemmy.club ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  yeah sorry I dont want that
  
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  - AzuraTheSpellkissed@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I’m not saying that’s great news, but it doesn’t sound like the self destruction move that some OSS companies have done recently. I wouldn’t migrate away just because of that change. In the end, they have to find a sustainable mode of operation.
    
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badgermurphy@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Does anyone know if there’s any chance for a fork before this situation inevitably deteriorates?

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- Mustachius_Grumpius@thelemmy.club ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  are u gonna maintain clients?
  
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  - badgermurphy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    No. If I were able to contribute, I would have said that. Do you know the answer to my question or just picking fights today?
    
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grillme@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Does anyone have a handy guide to switching to selfhosted version? I was considering doing that but I let my plan renew out of laziness.

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- JigglypuffSeenFromAbove@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  My knowledge of network security is very limited, right now I only self-host things like movies, music, ROMs, etc. I would love to do the same with my passwords, but I don’t think I would feel comfortable doing it with such sensitive data.
  
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  - TrippyHippyDan@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨seconds⁩ ago
    A viable concern if you wanted to put it public-facing. If you only care about syncing when you’re home, though, you should be able to host it perfectly fine just not giving any pathways in from the outside world.
    
    If you wanted to use the Android application, you would have to learn about TLS certificates anyway, because it doesn’t work without HTTPS.
    
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- unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Idk how it compares feature wise, but i have been running keepassxc/keepassdx combined with syncthing (or any file synchronization/cloud system) for many years without issues. The entire password manager database sits in one encrypted .kdbx file that you keep synced between your devices. Syncthing is nice because its p2p, so no self-/hosting required.
  
  keepassxc.org github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc
  
  f-droid.org/…/com.kunzisoft.keepass.libre/
  
  syncthing.net github.com/syncthing/syncthing
  
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  - 4am@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Every single time Bitwarden is mentioned on the internet, someone comes in here and proudly recites the anthem “I have been using Keep ass with sink things”
    
    It sucks compared to a dedicated extension.
    
    No autofill No TOTP or 2FA support Doesn’t do passkeys Doesn’t have organizational sharing Doesn’t sync to mobile devices Doesn’t integrate with mobile browsers without trusting some compatible 3rd party app Requires selfhosting your passwords (don’t fuck it up!)
    
    It’s actually pretty sad that the open source world doesn’t have a better solution for this. I mean I guess BitWarden was it but that’s been stolen by venture capital so
    
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  - uzay@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I had done that for a long time. It worked until it didn’t and I lost passwords. I tried again with keepass2android and it’s built-in sync. It again worked fine until at some point it wasn’t able to sync anymore for no discernible reason. I’d love for this to be a reliable setup, but it just isn’t in my experience, at least when there are 3+ devices involved with different clients and no proper awareness of the password manager and the sync sides of each other.
    
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  - lemmyvore@feddit.nl ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I just wish Syncthing didn’t have such a convoluted port usage, and also that its Android usage didn’t revolve around an unofficial app.
    
    So I’ll stick to apps that do sync over SSH (using FolderSync atm).
    
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  - hummingbird@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yup great combo. It baffles me why anyone one would favour to depend oneself on an online service instead
    
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  - WuxinGoat@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I used keepass but switched to vaultwarden, i might consider switching back, but is there a good self hostable web front end for a keepass database? (I need to access it on my work laptop and can’t install stuff there)
    
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  - brave_lemmywinks@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    That’s my stack, except swap keepassdx for keepass2android, and add the Firefox plugin.
    
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  - magnue@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I’ve been using that for a while. I like the control I have in that I understand where everything is stored and encrypted. I miss the way that Google password manager had the autofill for seemingly every page nailed though.
    
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- Zachariah@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Here it explains some self host options with links to “Get Started” for each:
  
  bitwarden.com/help/self-host-bitwarden/
  
  For example, here’s the link to “Linux standard deployment”
  
  bitwarden.com/help/install-on-premise-linux/
  
  You may also want to consider not making your server available to the open internet, and instead access it only on your LAN via VPN.
  
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  - TrippyHippyDan@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    That or jump to Vaultwarden github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden
    
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danielfm123@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Claude, code me a bit warden clone…

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- jobbies@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Careful, Claude is very sensitive these days. Might want to add ‘please’ and ‘thankyou’.
  
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