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scy

So these four things happened:

1. #Bitwarden, who always advertised being open source, introduced a non-free dependency into their client.

2. People start speculating whether this means that Bitwarden will become proprietary. github.com/bitwarden/clients/i

3. After three days of speculation, founder and CTO Kyle Spearrin posts a comment saying that this is just a measure to isolate a part of the code from the GPL.

4. He then closes & locks the issue.

Looks totally not suspicious, yeah. 😬

25 comments
n0toose

@scy FYI, I am not totally sure whether I trust my own initial take on this. I find it super suspicious, but framing it as "going proprietary" is too definitive for me to stand by what I originally said in the form of a joke.

scy

@n0toose Well, I'm neither saying "Bitwarden is going proprietary", nor "n0toose is saying that Bitwarden is going proprietary", just "people in the issue are speculating that Bitwarden might go proprietary", and from what I've seen, that's correct.

My personal opinion is: this smells. It especially smells that they need to protect stuff from the GPL, and that they're locking the issue. If there has simply been miscommunication, you'd expect them to start a conversation, not end one.

Christoph Petrausch

@scy @n0toose on the other hand, once the wrong communities see an issue, a civilian conversation is nearly impossible.

scy

"We're open source!"
"Yay, that's cool!"
"We just need to take some measures to protect our product from the implications of a copyleft license."
"Uhhh …"

Christof Schöch

@scy – Very disappointing! Will need to look for an alternative...

Dark Photon Studio

@scy In the end, capitalism destroys everything.

Oliver™

@scy

I am not going to pay for Bitwarden anymore (I am still a "premium" member, but will cancel that). The main reason for using Bitwarden was, that was free software (and a linux client).

As soon as I have decided what to use instead, @bitwarden will be forgotten.

F*cking proprietary software! F*cking capitalism!

ZanaGB

@scy i am surprised that more people aren't using keepassxc as their manager.

Kevin Norman

@scy definitely gonna have to keep an eye on this. Happy paid Bitwarden customer currently.

Ben Esquivel

@scy screenshot for the ages. This might be about to change.

Screenshot from Bitwarden’s page describing their open source practice. “Bitwarden is an open source password manager. The source code for Bitwarden is hosted on GitHub and everyone is free to review, audit, and contribute to the Bitwarden codebase.  We believe that being open source is one of the most important features of Bitwarden. Source code transparency is an absolute requirement for security solutions like Bitwarden.”
Stu

@scy Good to know, thanks. I'm not going to change (that's significant work) until they make this change, although I won't be renewing my annual contribution.

Crispy Branzino
@scy latest pull request is just a 640x480 gif of mr krabs...
Andy Mouse

@scy I saw this coming over a year ago, and started switching to KeePassDX. I think I smelled the capitalist rot starting to take hold.

64 mastodonz logistics co-op

@scy if you can prove that the two halves of the code are in fact one program, the gpl would apply

is it possible for someone else to build an open source front end?

WerySkok :verified_think:

@scy I'm happy that I use KeePassXC with Nextcloud sync

Cybso

@WerySkok my problem with Keypass is that it's like a Spiderman franchise. Keypass, KeypassX, KeypassXC ("a KeypassX reboot") and multiple different Android implementations, with different UI and different Features... That's just super confusing for me 😔

@scy

WerySkok :verified_think:

@cybso @scy KeePassDX seems to work pretty fine for me :blobcatgooglyshrug:

Rihards Olups

@WerySkok @cybso @scy Which, somewhat ironically, seems to be yet another product/project :)

WerySkok :verified_think:

@richlv @cybso @scy it doesn't have to be the same brand if it implements known standard

Cybso

@WerySkok It's the same reason why non-techie users prefer Blusky over Mastodon. They just want to use "Keepass", they don't want to compare and choose between different implementation.

To make things worse, the many different implementations also favor malware versions. How is the average user supposed to distinguish these from legitimate apps?

@richlv @scy

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