In the latest episode of “they will always sell you out” - they sold you out! Who would’ve thought.
Hoping for a good alternative client to appear, the writing is on the wall. Vaultwarden can’t exist without “leeching” off of Bitwarden.
Everyone who used and shilled them deserves thus lol
Has Vaultwarden said anything yet? I imagine that, if necessary, given that bitwarden’s client is still open, at the point they choose to try and close it, we, the users, can fork it and establish it for vaultwarden, correct? Or, maybe even the vaultwarden team will think about forking it themselves and making a light client as well to pair with the current server.
But Vaultwarden can exist without “leeching” they just haven’t needed to yet. That’s more symbiotic than parasitic. The parasite class just took over Bitwarden after all.
Not to my knowledge. As far as forks go, that’s true. However, Vaultwarden would need to become an independent team, and even if they don’t take over maintaining the client, someone else would need to become independent. While it can work, it can also lead to very nasty, longstanding bugs or security issues due to scale, budget, and effort. I see this a lot with Apple apps for example - smaller developers understandably don’t want to deal with Apple’s crap and costs, and everyone suffers in the end.
If you look at the current state of the cybersecurity world, it’s not kind to open-source developers. AI-generated BS is dredging up vulnerabilities on all sides. So security is also a big concern. Someone like Bitwarden has a lot of budget to swing.
Vaultwarden itself is incredibly good, but not perfect:
You’re right. And that’s why more of us need to contribute and spread the word of projects to support them.
Honestly, FOSS is our last bastion against this consumerist hellscape. I’m working on learning to build my own discord-like front end on matrix specifically for gaming. But I’m just one guy. We’ve all gotta pick where we place our effort and support those around us similarly.
Vaultwarden taking over bitwarden, should they shut doen as open source, I think would be entirely worthy. But it might need more people to either help vaultwarden or maintain it on their own, you’re right.
To me, seeing and learning about all of these projects gives me hope. All of these people and communities working to build things out of passion and dedication, because they care and want to provide value to others. No profit motive necessary. We just need to be there to support them as we’ve tied capital to our survival currently.
True dat. The more people know every corporation, even the most “wholesome chungus Reddit karma 100” ones ONLY care about squeezing profits out of you, the better off we’re going to be in the future.
Check out and contribute to gomuks. It’s the go-to power user Matrix client as I’ve learned. I recently developed a theme for it to make it look more like Cinny, which itself is a bit of a Discord UI Clone. I don’t actually use gomuks, but it really needed a nice theme.
Hoping for another Moonlight/Sunshine moment! Already running Vaultwarden, rbw, and Keyguard. Just need a simple FOSS browser extension for autofill and editing entries.
For context, Moonlight was created first as a FOSS Nvidea gamestream client. Then Sunshine was created as a FOSS server implementation. Later, Nvidia dropped “official” support, now the two projects are a FOSS stack built atop a formerly proprietary protocol.
Vaultwarden can’t exist without “leeching” off of Bitwarden.
Why not? No reason mobile apps and browser extensions can’t be forked.
rbw is an unofficial CLI client which works with vault warden.
I guess that explains the transition to AI coding as well
They responded on reddit and walked some of it back as an “oversight”: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitwarden/comments/1tdvnh7/comment/olznwcv/. Allegedly, I’m too lazy to verify.
A change that would require intent to make is not a mistake or oversight.
This sucks. I committed to Bitwarden years ago and now am going to have to switch before they lock me in the garden.
They also haven’t addressed the removal of inclusion and transparency from their goals.
EDIT: They did. They said it’s “less of a priority”. The article I shared has been updated. I smell corporate bullshit though. “Oversight” this, “priority shift” that, they’d have to work hard to gain any trust back.
Jesus, I’m tired of switching password managers.
I just got Bit warden this year! Gah. Where are we jumping?
Vaultwarden
Full circle to sticky notes on monitor.
KeePassXC + KeePassDX is probably the best option, with the downside of no way to sync easily (syncthing is probably the best option there)
I might switch back at some point, been getting frustrated with the bitwarden extension performance always being so poor.
Merge conflicts are a concern for KeePass, especially for those that don’t want to resolve them. Sync is difficult. AFAIK this is a very common issue with Syncthing setups.
Also, the portability from Bitwarden to KP leaves a bit to be desired, though that’s probably 90% on BW.
Sync however you want. Syncthing, Nextcloud, Dropbox, Gdrive etc.
Syncthing is the way to leave Google Drive, etc.
Rclone with any cloud provider is another great option that’s seldom mentioned. I posted my setup as a comment on another post. You may find it here - https://programming.dev/comment/23849767
KeePass isn’t going anywhere. They’re also dragging their feet on passkey support, so you might go with KeepassXC.
They also don’t effectively allow collaboration though, which is my cheif reason for using a cloud hosted password manager.
What is “collaboration” in this context?
Parallel creating, reading, updating, deleting password entries by multiple users.
Whoa, thanks. I had no idea this was a thing…
Sharing passwords between groups of people so everyone always has the up to date version. Not breaking the world if two people try to modify the same entry as some file syncing solutions do.
Hmm, interesting, though isn’t that a fault of the organization not having an account-linking system so that each person could have their own credentials but can still access the unified content? This workaround seems… flimsy, unless I’m not picturing a legit scenario in which no other method is as good, or something.
Sure they do. Multiple people can have a file open at the same time. I use it for exactly this every day at work.
With KeePassXC, that is. I don’t know if other flavors have different support. I use XC primarily for the browser extension.
And you can both modify the same things without causing horrible conflict issues? And you can share only parts of your vault with someone rather than having entirely different vaults you have to switch between? I’m assuming you mean putting the file somewhere like Google Drive, and you can access it offline even if you can’t edit it offline? For feature parity with Bitwarden, obviously ideally one could edit any time and it would resolve problems when it came back online if there were any but Bitwarden doesn’t allow this.
Yes, no conflicts. I don’t know if you can only share part of vault; I just created a separate one for a separate team.
I wouldn’t put it in Google Drive or anything like that. The separate sync logic will definitely cause conflicts.
I’m not worried about having access if I’m offline, because if I’m offline I’m not going to be able to log into anything anyway.
I guess a laptop, server, IoT device, or WiFi connection when your main device doesn’t have internet is out of scope for you?
Like fixing my laptop and not wanting to type the new password into my phone instead of copy/paste, sync when online?
And how are you sharing a file, to multiple people anywhere in the world realtime ish, without a cloud service you or someone else hosts? Doesn’t that necessitate some syncronization logic?It’s hosted on a local network share, so we don’t need Internet access.
If can’t copy paste, I just type it out.
We use a VPN to the office.
Their AI policy looks very reasonable, and they certainly aren’t vibe coding. Everything is rigorously reviewed and tested by a handful of experienced, competent humans.
Yeah, there was. It was forked because of that, actually: https://codeberg.org/ChiPass.
Link gives 404
404
Two articles behind a paywall, one that won’t load, and another article that says the big problem with passkeys is…people are unfamiliar with them.
If anyone tells you that Passkeys are bad, they’re a liar. Way more safe than passwords, full stop.
Just don’t let Microsoft or Apple tie them to your device. You don’t have to do that.
Are you calling me a liar? That’s pretty weird; it’s not like I’m telling you to stick to passwords while I move to passkeys. With that said, though, get Bypass Paywalls Clean (Mozilla-only, as far as I know) and you’ll never see another paywall again. I forgot about having that.
Just don’t let Microsoft or Apple tie them to your device. You don’t have to do that.
The problem is that this is where it’s eventually going to lead to.
Took me like 5 minutes to move back to KeepassXC.
Every company is basically evil at this point.
Since Dodge v. Ford Motor Co (1919), if not earlier.
See also: https://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-history-corporations-us/
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
I think the rope they’re selling us might, one day soon, have a net positive impact.
This is why corporate promises can never be trusted, because a new CEO can change those promises on a whim.
It’s part of why despite being interested in Beeper, I never signed up for it because I had questions about if those privacy promises they made would be kept if they sold to a bigger company… which they eventually did.
On the plus side Bitwarden already made an official open source self-hosted version, which can be forked and/or return to the community developed Vaultwarden roots.
Meanwhile KeepassXC keeps on chugging along.
FYI beeper is really just matrix with bridges. Once I realized that I set up my own and now I have the same functionalities as beeper, self hosted, with a choice of clients.
Oh I was well aware at the time, but I had a lot of friends who still struggled with trying to use Matrix/Element so at the time I was seeking a simpler solution for them.
How fucking stupid do you need to be to struggle with element do they struggle to use cups are they trying to do weird advanced features on an architecture I’ve never heard of with a compiler built themselves wtf
Wow, usually people lose their shit and complain that Element is too complex and that me and the devs are being assholes asking them to use it… You know kind of like all the people here on the Fediverse who think we need to make it bigger and bring in everyone from everywhere and that the devs and users who defend them are awful for not focusing on user interface first and making it less confusing to choose a server…
Anyway, thanks for being on team reasonable, because I’m with you on this 100%, but I can’t change how little people want to learn anything sadly so I make compromises with people who cant or wont learn how to do things. It sucks, people really don’t seem to understand that security and convenience are a balance, and every time people argue for shit to be easier they’re actually arguing for everything to be less secure. You sacrifice security for convenience, every time, and the opposite happens because you can sacrifice convenience for increased security measures. Security has to be complex by nature to be effective, and the core of Matrix is being a secure, encrypted protocol, which they have already actually put a ton of work into making easier for fucking normies. Yet, it’s never enough for people. Always screams of “It’s too complex! I hate thinking!”
That’s troubling, I don’t like what this portends.
The new CEOs background especially suggests they’re spiffing up the company for a later sellout, why else would they pick a merger specialist for the role?
I think the original title was more helpful because it shows that this is a recent development. Maybe you can add “new CEO”?
Bitwarden scrubs ‘Always free’ and ‘Inclusion’ values from its website as longtime execs step down
In February, longtime CEO Michael Crandell moved to an advisory role, according to LinkedIn, with no announcement from the company. His replacement, Michael Sullivan, former CEO of both Acquia and Insightsoftware, touts his experience with “all facets of mergers and acquisitions” on his own LinkedIn page, including experience working with leading private equity firms.
CFO Stephen Morrison also left Bitwarden in April, replaced by former InVision CEO Michael Shenkman. Both Crandell and Morrison joined the company in 2019. Kyle Spearrin, who started Bitwarden as a fun hobby project in 2015, remains the company’s CTO.
You’re right, changed
Well, poop.
Oh no, and I just setup Vaultwarden
Clue me in on why vaultwarden can’t exist without it?
It can, but vaultwarden, as it currently is, is an implementation of the server only. So if bitwarden decides to go closed source all the way, they’d haver to start either creating their own clients or fork the current bitwarden clients.
That’s fine. We just treat it as a fork from this point onwards.
Okay. You first.
