Live data from Hacker News

Bitwarden SDK relicensed from proprietary to GPLv3

github.com

131–140 of 381 posts

Re: Bitwarden SDK relicensed from proprietary to GPLv3

#131
post #26

People here are incredibly hard to please. Very clearly a packaging issue that got blown out of proportion. They've done largely the right things for _years_ in terms of security. They've operated pretty transparently in terms of open sourcing. They've allowed vaultwarden to exist, and eventually created a self hostable version as well. But one bad release with a license screw up and nobody is willing to give them an…

You build a hundred solid bridges and you get called John the Good Bridge Builder. But lest you once screw up your software licensing and people notice and it blows up, you'll end up as John the Software Screwer in the annals of history... until next week.

It seems though, that in the world of software, you can unfuck a sheep.

What worries me, though, that people who should have known better commit such oopsie daisies more and more (across many projects, I don’t mean this one only), almost as if they are testing the waters to see what they can get away with.

Re: Bitwarden SDK relicensed from proprietary to GPLv3

#132
post #67
post #64

What would be a good way to backup the passwords stored in Bitwarden? I am worried that someday suddenly bitwarden could stop working and I will lose access to all the stored passwords? Should I have a physical copy of all the passwords stored in a vault at home?

Desktop: keepass variants. Android: Keepass2 android. Use syncthing to stay in sync.

How to use Syncthing on Android now that the app has gone?

Re: Bitwarden SDK relicensed from proprietary to GPLv3

#133
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, I no longer recommend Bitwarden for normal people because the built-in password manager in Firefox is too good Interesting, I've always felt that browser-based password managers provided remarkably little value for most people. Using them on mobile is tricky and platform dependent, it's easy to have local-only, non-synced data and then lose it, and being multi-device is trickier, especially in a work…

Firefox password sync just works. It's one of those things I never think about. Watching friends and family struggle with bespoke, poorly integrated password managers makes me cringe and is one of the big reasons I enjoy the seamless experience of the built-in Firefox password manager.

Firefox sync made the criminal sin of implementing end-to-end encryption, enabling it by default, and being insufficiently clear to people that their passwords are lost forever when they forget the master password.

This provides a really terrible UX to "normal" users. I woulnd't recommend that option to anybody who doesn't already know what E2E is and what tradeoffs it has.

Google's implementation is a lot better in that regard, at least they offer plenty of avenues for account recovery.

Re: Bitwarden SDK relicensed from proprietary to GPLv3

#134

Thank you to Bitwarden for relicensing a thing to Free/Open License! Unfortunately, I no longer recommend Bitwarden for normal people because the built-in password manager in Firefox is too good. But for anyone with more advance needs (or who doesn't trust a password manager built into a web browser, I always recommend Bitwarden because KeepassXC + syncing is way too difficult for normal people.

> Unfortunately, I no longer recommend Bitwarden for normal people because the built-in password manager in Firefox is too good Interesting, I've always felt that browser-based password managers provided remarkably little value for most people. Using them on mobile is tricky and platform dependent, it's easy to have local-only, non-synced data and then lose it, and being multi-device is trickier, especially in a work…

All serious browser vendors offer sync to logged in users. That’s multi-device, cross platform and pretty foolproof. I still prefer Bitwarden because of self-hosting and integrating nicely with the iOS ecosystem. But there’s not much wrong with the browser approach.

Re: Bitwarden SDK relicensed from proprietary to GPLv3

#135
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You build a hundred solid bridges and you get called John the Good Bridge Builder. But lest you once screw up your software licensing and people notice and it blows up, you'll end up as John the Software Screwer in the annals of history... until next week.

Well it is kinda blasphemy to swear with evil proprietaryness in a loving FOSS community

And then we have WordPress, former champion of open source and GPL, with all their soap opera drama.

Re: Bitwarden SDK relicensed from proprietary to GPLv3

#136

Thank you to Bitwarden for relicensing a thing to Free/Open License! Unfortunately, I no longer recommend Bitwarden for normal people because the built-in password manager in Firefox is too good. But for anyone with more advance needs (or who doesn't trust a password manager built into a web browser, I always recommend Bitwarden because KeepassXC + syncing is way too difficult for normal people.

I recommend Bitwarden family plans to non-technical people. It's pretty user friendly, and you can give people emergency access. A couple of recent deaths in my life have made me painfully aware that this is something that many people really need.

Re: Bitwarden SDK relicensed from proprietary to GPLv3

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I store the password vault in dropbox. Done.

> store the password vault in dropbox No local backup? Do you rely on the network working all the time? I do something similar on the mobile phone (the reasining is, if there's no network, there's nothing I need to login to) but I also keep a local copy on my laptop (that I sometimes operate with limited connectivity). Without any automatic syncing, one of the two copies will be stale.

Back in the day we tried to sync KeePass vaults at work and ended up with a conflict about once a week, which is way too often. Not sure if other password managers have solved this.

Re: Bitwarden SDK relicensed from proprietary to GPLv3

#138
post #23
post #10

Luckily if they die another will rise up. At this point I’m thinking I’ll just use the Apple Keychain if Bitwarden gets up to no good again.

Two things are preventing me from doing that: I occasionally want to access my passwords in a browser (and I do not want to log in to iCloud on that machine), and I'd feel really bad about having my passkeys stored in an Apple service with absolutely no way of exporting them in case I ever do switch platforms. (Bitwarden at least includes passkeys in their JSON export format, as far as I know.)

As another commenter has mentioned, Apple Passwords allows export to simple CSV:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/passwords/mchl35b12625...

What I dislike about Apple Passwords is how tightly coupled everything is.

I just tried to set it up on my Windows 10 machine with a local account, but it requires Windows Hello to be turned on, which can't be done except with a Microsoft account.

Kinda ridiculous of them to force arbitrary restrictions on us.

Re: Bitwarden SDK relicensed from proprietary to GPLv3

#139
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41893994

Sounds like this is what they open sourced? So I don't really see the issue.

It was "source available", but licensed under their proprietary Bitwarden licence and not GPLv3.

Re: Bitwarden SDK relicensed from proprietary to GPLv3

#140
post #64

What would be a good way to backup the passwords stored in Bitwarden? I am worried that someday suddenly bitwarden could stop working and I will lose access to all the stored passwords? Should I have a physical copy of all the passwords stored in a vault at home?

The simplest way of doing this would be to export your bitwarden vault in plaintext (as a json or csv) and then store it as a password protected zip file.

This should be easy to encrypt and decrypt on all operating systems, and would make it easy to move your vault to a new password manager.

Post reply on HN