- cross-posted to:
- selfhosted@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- selfhosted@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://thelemmy.club/post/57178743
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 everyoneIf 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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Pretty much seen it coming when the new CEO came in and removed the words “Transparency” and “Always Free” from the official marketing.
Anyone got some better alternatives for people to try out?
If you are on Lemmy, theres very high probability that you also have the technical abilities required to self host Vaultwarden and stop relying on a greedy company for your most critical aspect.
I could but I don’t want. Self hosting something this important? I can’t login to any website without this software, including my email. It’s super critical.
Yes because using a different then normies app also means technical skills. In fact, haven’t your PhD diploma came along when you signed up for your Lemmy account?
I have Vaultwarden, it works with the web app and browser extensions. But is there a vaultwarden specific android app? I know technically I can use the Bitwarden app. But sometimes they update the Bitwarden app too fast for all the changes to translate into Vaultwarden and then im kinda forced to use the web app.
The web app is just a minor inconvenience to me so I continue to use it. Just wondering if there is an easier Vaultwarden specific solution for android.
Yeah, keyguard is pretty good
Then we will shit … the enshitification exodus goes on
Fantastic. I’m tired of having to change password managers. DashLane, Keepass, LastPass, etc., they all end up shooting their own foot somehow.
What happened to keepass?
It has become Keep Ass.
No one’s taking away my favourite bash scrips: https://www.passwordstore.org/
When Bitwarden got a meh “refresh” of the user interface and started vibe coding stuff (I’m not some super hard-line anti-AI person, but dammit, you absolutely should not vibe code security-critical apps), I switched to KeePassX. It was like coming back home! I used to use KeePass and KeePass 2, switched to Bitwarden for a long while, and while it was neat, KeePassX is just neater. (Doesn’t have cloud sync, but syncing the vault files with LocalSend is easy enough.)
I guess you mean KeepassXC, because the last release of KeepassX apparently was in 2016.
KeepassXC is also using AI, they even made a blog post about it a year ago.
https://keepassxc.org/blog/2025-11-09-about-keepassxcs-code-quality-control/
Honestly their description of use and why that use it is not concerning. I’m more concerned with their choice being copilot lol.
Yep, ChiPass is a good replacement: https://codeberg.org/ChiPass/ChiPass
Yup, I was supposed to say KeepassXC. (…I mean I probably considered using KeepassX at some point, it’s XC’s predecessor after all. But as I recall Keepass 2 worked well enough on Mono, so I didn’t need to switch.)
Also, whoopsies on XC’s AI use. At least they don’t seem to embrace it as much as Bitwarden, but still makes me go hmm.
left long ago unfortunately
I think all of us can just using Vaultwarden, it seems to fix all the problems that are there even in the old free version of Bitwarden.
The issue is, the bitwarden app you still use is what is affected by this change.
I have a proton membership anyways so proton pass seems good since they have SimpleLogin
App store EULAs and GPLv3 frequently clash. This change only affects the app store binary releases.
So, 99% of users. Do you use an iOS phone or the browser extensions? You’re affected.
So, 99% of users.
How? It’s not like the source code if no longer under GPL, it’s just that this specific compiled binary is under a different license but it doesn’t change anything for anyone in real life.
How do you install the GPL version on iOS or chrome?
What would be the reason for using this and not Keepass from the beginning?
For me it is totp, cloud capabilities and passkeys
I might be a bit paranoid (or an idiot) but I think having the password and the totp in the same database (and app) somewhat negates the point of two-factor authentication.
It does negate the big issue of passwords leaking from the websites and that’s the most important part of even having totp.
Nobody is going to spend time to separate the 2 and maintain backups of two different things and all that extra effort when 90% of people don’t even use password managers.
Don’t let perfection be the enemy of improvement.
It does, but not every account is worth it
I’m using Strongbox on macOS and iOS. Uses a KeePass2 database in the background, does TOTP (so does KeePassXC), syncs via iCloud (but also supports SFTP, WebDAV, OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox) and also keeps my Passkeys. And it supports Apple’s AutoFill API, so it works in basically any input field across the systems and feels “native”. No browser extensions (at least for Safari) needed.
And if it goes rogue, I can switch to e.g. KeePassium or any other KeePass-compatible app.
Well, a big reason I ended up with bitwarden is being able to have a family group that I can help foster, encourage, force my family to use a password manager by having/showing them how these work , why they should use them and continually point them to the app to save and/or retrieve passwords.
The barrier to entry for non technical users is much lower. I don’t want to manage making sure everyone’s db is safe/synced etc… either
I don’t know, my wife (0 technical knowledge) works perfectly, with daughter and personal databases. Of course, it’s true that I set everything up myself and I make sure the database is on the family NAS. I’m not judging you or anything, but while it’s true that setting it up is a bit more difficult, using it, in my opinion, is not at all.
I do run a number of self hosted things, (nextcloud, immich, plex). I had my own pw manager, and had tried keepass myself and when it came time to push the family to using a pw manager I just opted for bitwarden here vs taking ownership of managing that too!
Hell, it’s still a literal fight/push to make them understand the importance of it <sigh>
Sigh… I hope this isn’t the first move of enshitifying bitwarden. I read the comments/replies and hope this is benign but I’m now nervous
The first move was when they hired a CEO who comes from private equity. This is the second move.
I think it is the next move (not the first) in enshittifying bitwarden. I think the first move was the leadership change announced in May.
That’s quite the disappointment. Probably need to prepare to switch away from bitwarden or at least research options for open source clients for my vaultwarden backend.
Someone can correct me, but this change seems to be targeting people who are repackaging bitwarden and selling it. It does feel like we are trending the wrong direction though.
If you read their announcement carefully you’ll find things like
All current features are available in both versionsWhich strongly implies that the different versions will start to diverge over time. Then at one point they will just be like maah it’s not worth putting more work into the open source thing, we’ll focus on building new cool features yada yada yada. And this is how all the open to partly open to closed source rug pulls worked in the last years.
(If you want to do this the worst way possible like MinIO you also squash / delete the Git history the moment you announce you’re only working on closed source)
Minio also deleted the repos altogether about two weeks ago.
what is even out there? I pay for proton and bitwarden. but I just dont trust them
Before Bitwarden / Vaultwarden I went with Keepass (it was some fork don’t remember the exact name KeepassXC probably) synced via Nextcloud. It’s not as convenient as Bitwarden plus at least back then it didn’t support passkeys. So yeah, I don’t know what is actually out there. Honestly I don’t think it’s super urgent to start hunting for alternatives but probably we should have at least some ideas in case the Bitwarden team does some weird moves.
I really don’t want to have to switch password managers again.
Keepass.
Don’t even know where i’d switch.
Proton -> I already use Proton suite and I like the seperation, the 2 password option doesn’t work for me either. I just need a seperate password.
Keepass -> I use quite a few devices and the sync just seems like a nightmare…
Any other options? For now i’ll stick as BW is still great but will start exploring others.
If you have a Nextcloud server, you should try Passman.
I use UNIX pass utility, it’s very minimal and works for me
Keepass X Syncthing
syncthing runs on everything and is easy to configure.
Maybe it’s changed in the year since I tried but I absolutely could not get syncthings to work on android
That’s not an option for iOS users.
You could use Synctrain or maybe Möbius Sync to SyncThing-sync a folder with your phone, then use Strongbox or KeePassium or any other KeePass-compatible app to work with the file?
This, or Vaultwarden, but a lot of people swear by Keepass.
Just rip the bandaid off.
And go to what? What works as well / seamlessly as Bitwarden?
