Open Source

31713 readers

205 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Posts must be relevant to the open source ideology
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

537

Bitwarden Desktop version 2024.10.0 is no longer free software (github.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

127 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Pull request #10974 introduces the @bitwarden/sdk-internal dependency which is needed to build the desktop client. The dependency contains a licence statement which contains the following clause:

You may not use this SDK to develop applications for use with software other than Bitwarden (including non-compatible implementations of Bitwarden) or to develop another SDK.

This violates freedom 0.

It is not possible to build desktop-v2024.10.0 (or, likely, current master) without removing this dependency.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Sorry that's my mistake - I should have said "source available", rather than "open source". IMO, being source available is the critical component of a password manager like Bitwarden, and is what I meant when I referred to their main competitive advantage.

They might also choose to be open source and fix this specific issue and return to GPL-compatibility, but remaining source available would seem to be the more critical factor.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So you meant to say:

I would go as far as to say that Bitwarden’s main competitive advantage and differentiation is that it’s source is available.

That is not true, there are a lot of other password management software out there where the client source code is either open source or source available. For instance keyguard: https://github.com/AChep/keyguard-app?tab=License-1-ov-file#readme which is an alternative proprietary bitwarden client, where the source is also available. Also the Proton Pass client is under GPLv3.

I would argue that the main advantage of bitwarden compared to others is that it is open source and has an open source server for self-hosting (vaultwarden). Which of course makes it difficult in terms of business strategy with their VC funding. But maybe becoming a non-profit org and getting money from donors, the strategic funds of EU and other governments, etc. might be an alternative way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I'm not aware of any other enterprise password management where the server source is available and auditable. Proton certainly is not.