I’ve been a happy user of Pass (https://www.passwordstore.org/) for a few years now. Can’t see it being monetized any time soon, which is a Good Thing. So is its strict adherence to the Unix philosophy.
Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager
121–130 of 306 posts
Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
The new CEO concerns me. I didn't know who the founder was but I always had the impression it was a lone hacker. They passed the baton. Now it's some old Web 1.0 guy who was the CEO of eFax in the 90's. That's not the type of service I thought I was using. I looked up their headquarters in Santa Barbara and it's a co-working space. That doesn't sound very secure. Though that could be their corp address and they're hi…
The "new" CEO has been at the helm since 2019. Long before the mentioned funding in 2022. We don't really have a HQ since we are a 100% remote company. Source: I am the Bitwarden founder.
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Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
For this I self-host vaultwarden ( https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden ), an implementation of the bitwarden server, on my raspberry pi at home (and back up the DB frequently). It works well enough for me, and doesn't have my stuff stored in a single company's cloud.
So what if the disk crashes? Do you keep backups? In the cloud?
Always have backups... but in the bitwarden/vaultwarden case (just like with git), every client has a full copy which can be syched back to a new server, so even if you lose a server, you still have all passwords on (every) client.
In my case, that is multiple browser instances on multiple laptops and the bitwarden client on android.
Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "new" CEO has been at the helm since 2019. Long before the mentioned funding in 2022. We don't really have a HQ since we are a 100% remote company. Source: I am the Bitwarden founder.
Can you maybe touch a bit on the intended relationship between you and the VC? Are there plans to do aggressive monetization of Bitwarden? As a long time user, I'm a bit concerned as well.
Bitwarden has had VC investors for years, long before the mentioned 2022 funding. I think our track record to date shows how we operate in this relationship. We specifically choose partners that align with our vision, not just anyone that comes off the street wanting to throw money at us (though there are many). Our health as a company afford us this luxury.
Bitwarden is and has been monetized since the beginning. There are no plans to change how we monetize our products. It's working well for us.
Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "new" CEO has been at the helm since 2019. Long before the mentioned funding in 2022. We don't really have a HQ since we are a 100% remote company. Source: I am the Bitwarden founder.
Can you maybe touch a bit on the intended relationship between you and the VC? Are there plans to do aggressive monetization of Bitwarden? As a long time user, I'm a bit concerned as well.
No company will eever say that thereyare plans for aggresive monetezation. They will always say everything stays the same - open-source mindset etc.
Until 2 years later there is a license and pricing change. One that will make it 10 times more expensive - or the free/open-source version will be crippled.
Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager
#126I’m relatively new to this site. Why is this post popular? For me it links to the Bitwarden front page.
Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you maybe touch a bit on the intended relationship between you and the VC? Are there plans to do aggressive monetization of Bitwarden? As a long time user, I'm a bit concerned as well.
Bitwarden has had VC investors for years, long before the mentioned 2022 funding. I think our track record to date shows how we operate in this relationship. We specifically choose partners that align with our vision, not just anyone that comes off the street wanting to throw money at us (though there are many). Our health as a company afford us this luxury. Bitwarden is and has been monetized since the beginning. Th…
Thanks, then this all seems to be much ado about nothing. Cheers!
Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager
#128FYI - 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...
As someone who much prefers bootstrapping businesses, this seems like a just insane amount of money to raise.
If you had a growing popular product like this, why on earth would you raise that amount of money? This isn't a rhetorical question btw! I would honestly like to know the rationale here?!
Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager
#129The title is misleading. This is not fully "free and open-source". I'm actually puzzled by the licensing structure. Bitwarden server is dual-licensed [1] - part of it is licensed with AGPL (Open Source) - some features are licensed with a source available Bitwarden license Now, even the Open Source core requires you to register if you want to self host. This is to provide you with complementary services like security…
"Commercial.Core and SSO integration: Code for certain new modules that are designed and developed for use by larger organizations and enterprise environments is released under the Bitwarden License, a "source available" license." The rest of Bitwarden is free both as in beer and as in speech. Dunno why you think otherwise. Vaultwarden exists, and Bitwarden clients are compatible with it.
Thank you, and other people, for mentioning Vaultwarden. I’ll check that out. This is, however, a separate software package, coming from different people, so not related to my question.
Bitwarden is not free as in speech, as it requires me to register with Bitwarden, Inc and get a license key to be able to self host. Also, then it uses some closed cloud services.
As for the free as in beer - this is more nuanced, but I still think it is far from free. For individuals - hosting something that requires 2-4 GB of RAM [1] is definitely not free. For companies - hosting something that doesn’t include SSO is pointless. The Bitwarden source available license, that includes SSO, does not allow production use [2], and requires a paid subscription instead.
BTW I completely understand the reasons to not open source everything. What I don’t understand is: why not use the source available Bitwarden license for the entire server codebase?
[1]: https://bitwarden.com/help/install-on-premise-linux/
[2]: https://github.com/bitwarden/server/blob/master/LICENSE_FAQ....
Re: Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager
#130FYI - 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...
Wow, thanks for the info. This is indeed quite a huge sum of money for such a cheap service from which you can easily migrate. That’s a bit worrying.
It depends. If the point of the VC money is to go after enterprise customers and to expand into other enterprisey software security products, then $100M seems reasonable to me, especially for the time when the investment happened. The VC market seems to have cooled quite a bit from when Bitwarden took that investment, so times change and maybe they were just striking while the iron was hot?
The $10/year individual plan wouldn't warrant $100M investment. But going after big companies who are going to commit to $X/year/employee or similar kinds of pricing packages might, especially if Bitwarden integrates with existing corporate directory systems and such for delegating and managing accounts.