posted in Selfhosted

Mustachius_Grumpius@Mustachius_Grumpius@thelemmy.club

Bitwarden Switches to Commercial License

cross-posted from: thelemmy.club/post/57178796

cross-posted from: thelemmy.club/post/57178743

RyanL Bitwarden Employee

Hello everyone!

Starting in the next release, the Bitwarden apps published to the various stores will be the commercially licensed builds. No action is needed, and the apps will work exactly as they do today.

Bitwarden remains committed to open source security and transparency
The GPLv3 OSS licensed version continues to be updated and published on GitHub
All current features are available in both versions
License details are on GitHub
Bitwarden remains committed to a robust, free forever plan for everyone

If you have any questions, please ask them in this thread. Thanks all!

EDIT:

Bitwarden is not going closed-source
You can still fork Bitwarden
No change to self-hosting, the licensing change affects those who are repackaging and reselling Bitwarden
The free plan is here to stay permanently
community.bitwarden.com/t/published-version-update-in-app-stores/102750
badgermurphy@badgermurphy@lemmy.world
edited

Replying to @⁨teezeh@ieji.de⁩

Unfortunately, there is no historical example where this hasn’t turned predatory. It’s a tale as old as venture capital has been in software development:

  • get free contributions from altruistic people donating their time and expertise to your FOSS project that you’re selling
  • make a closed-source set of extensions as optional dependencies
  • slowly diverge the closed source feature set to include developer and user “must-haves” you do not contribute upstream
  • slow or functionally halt open source contributions

It is an oft-repeated long con to pull off a mass heist of donated skill and time while imposing vendor lock-in on your users through a back door.

"As the poison spread through his body, the frog cried out, “Why did you sting me? You have killed us both!”

The scorpion replied, “I couldn’t help it. It’s my nature.”