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Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager

bitwarden.com

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Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager

#32

FYI - Bitwarden took $100M in VC money last year. At some point, the pressure to aggressively monetize will unfortunately happen. https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/06/open-source-password-manag...

The potential enshitification from this worries me. What crazy stroke will they feel they have to pull on users to satisfy the VCs need for a quick cash out.

Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager

#33
post #5

Here, I also want to mention vaultwarden which is an open-source Rust implementation of the server: https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden

Using Vauldwarden for my team passwords (for personal ones I have Password Store). Zero problems except when I had to migrate to another server and it didn't pick up the database from the Docker volume I restored the first time (although it's equally likely a Docker problem or me doing something wrong).

Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager

#34
post #7

I am a happy user and find it very convenient but how safe is it really to have all your jewels centralized in the cloud, including 2FA. It seems such a worthwhile target. On the other hand keeping everything in sync manually seems a hassle and in the end you just encrypt on your machine and the syncing goes through the cloud anyway, so where's the difference? I'd be happy to hear thoughts on this.

If your data is valuable enough, or you personally have the skills for something better, then yes it’s not the greatest solution. For the average user, it is infinitely better to use a password manager than to use hunter42 on all their accounts.

Guess I had better go update all my passwords to hunter43 now.

Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager

#35

FYI - Bitwarden took $100M in VC money last year. At some point, the pressure to aggressively monetize will unfortunately happen. https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/06/open-source-password-manag...

What are they doing with this kind money? Venture out into other topics like Proton with Protonpass and Protondrive?

Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager

#36

I am a KeepassXC user, yet this sounds interesting. What does Bitwarden offer to make me want to switch?

I did the same for years: KeepassXC + Database being synced through Google Drive + keyfile stored only locally on each device (Linux personal laptop, Windows work laptop + Android personal phone) + Safe strong password that was only in my head. The main reason I decided to switch to Bitwarden it's because the Google drive client I used on Linux (GVFS in Gnome) gave me a few good headaches. Basically, everytime I made a modification to the database, it changed the name of the file, therefore, when opening the database later from another device, I had to be listing files by modification date to try to guess the most recent one and open it. Also, sometimes from Linux, I got errors from KeepassXC saying that the database was not writable, so I had to save it in a different location that wasn't the Google drive FS and then move it manually to it. Perhaps not a big deal for some people but after years of this I just got tired of shenanigans on something I consider too critical.

The reasons for me for switching specifically to Bitwarden were:

- Price.

- Open source.

- Multiplatform client.

- Simple and straightforward to import stuff from KeepassXC.

- MFA.

- Possibility of self hosting. (Although I'm using the saas version for now)

Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self hosting is incredibly easy with vaultwarden ( https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden )

That's a different implementation though

A different implementation for the server though, not the clients. So, as a user you wouldn't see the difference.

And as an admin it's much easier to maintain.

Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager

#38
post #5

Here, I also want to mention vaultwarden which is an open-source Rust implementation of the server: https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden

Only thing missing from Vaultwarden is SSO/Oauth. There’s a PR for it that’s been open for years. I’ve lost hope that it’ll ever land.

Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager

#39
I wanted to like Bitwarden, due to its “open source” nature. But 1Password is really miles ahead, and it's a little ironic, as 1Password 8 went through a major refactoring to a Node-enabled UI, which many people disliked, and it's still miles and miles ahead.

I tried teaching my father to use Bitwarden for the sole reason that it seemed to be translated into my native tongue. In his use, Bitwarden turned out to be completely unreliable. As techies, we stop noticing the little glitches, the times when Bitwarden is unable to auto-complete, or to detect a login that needs to be saved. Or the times Bitwarden logs you out of the account, or fails to use your biometrics in the browser because the app is no longer running in the background. Or the management UX of the app that's terrible. For us, these are little annoyances, but for my father it was the difference between usable and unusable.

The individual plan is very cheap, but the family plan is costly. And you can self-host, sure, but it's expensive to self-host.

When talking of self-hosting, people actually mean the alternative built from scratch in Rust (vaultwarden). Well, that project was never audited to my knowledge. Open source or not, it may have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited remotely, and I don't understand how people can trust it.

Bitwarden also took VC investments. Which is fine, I guess they need to grow, but I'm longing for projects that are owned by sustainable businesses that don't need to grow. Why does everything need freaking VC investments? The problem being that startups that took such investments are not trustworthy to be around in another year from now, sorry. Although this is true of 1Password as well.

Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager

#40
post #5

Here, I also want to mention vaultwarden which is an open-source Rust implementation of the server: https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden

Using Vauldwarden for my team passwords (for personal ones I have Password Store). Zero problems except when I had to migrate to another server and it didn't pick up the database from the Docker volume I restored the first time (although it's equally likely a Docker problem or me doing something wrong).

> it didn't pick up the database from the Docker volume I restored the first time

This happened to me too. Moved to KepassXC with syncthing and I haven't looked back

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