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Concerns Raised Over Bitwarden Moving Further Away From Open-Source (www.phoronix.com)

submitted 2 months ago by AsudoxDev@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[-] ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 130 points 2 months ago

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Can we have a decent password manager that isn’t tied to a browser or company? I pay for Bitwarden. I’m not being cheap. But open source is more secure. We can look at the code ourselves if there’s a concern.

[-] wetsuiterest 27 points 2 months ago

Keepassxc? Vaultwarden?

[-] pmc 18 points 2 months ago

Isn't Vaultwarden used with non-free Bitwarden clients?

[-] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 3 points 2 months ago

The clients are free.

[-] pmc 21 points 2 months ago

They now require a non-free Bitwarden SDK component. That's what this whole conversation is about.

[-] aisteru@lemmy.aisteru.ch 2 points 2 months ago

Could you ELI5 please?

[-] AsudoxDev@programming.dev 7 points 2 months ago

"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 is a condition when using their SDK. This is not considered a free (as in freedom) component because it violates freedom 0: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago

And the whole conversation is about a bug, not a change in direction...

Update: Bitwarden posted to X this evening to reaffirm that it's a "packaging bug" and that "Bitwarden remains committed to the open source licensing model."

[-] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 1 points 2 months ago

Only the desktop client. And the response is that not being able to compile sans SDK is an issue they will resolve.

I still think this is bad directionally, but we need to see what happens.

[-] bilb@lem.monster 3 points 2 months ago

This need not be the case, though! There's an open source client on Android called Keyguard. I don't think the desktop app was at all useful anyway. You can just log into your Vaultwarden through any browser. The desktop app is pointless.

[-] 486@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

[-] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 2 points 2 months ago

True, but the firefox extension is nice.

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 13 points 2 months ago

Its called Keepass. You are welcome

[-] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 months ago

They have confirmed it was a packaging bug and will be resolved.

[-] asap@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Nothing in the article or in the Bitwarden repo suggests that it's moving away from open source

[-] coolmojo@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

It is a license problem. The license condition of the SDK which is required to build the client app change to limit the usage of it. The new license states that you can only use the Bitwarden SDK for Bitwarden. It is against the Freedoom-0 of the Free Software Foundation. The limitation of English language is that it is hard to differentiate between Free (as in Free bear) and Free (as in Freedoom). Also open source which could mean complaining with FOSS and that source is available. This been unfortunately have been abused before.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago

From the article, it's a packaging bug, not a change in direction.

Update: Bitwarden posted to X this evening to reaffirm that it's a "packaging bug" and that "Bitwarden remains committed to the open source licensing model."

[-] coolmojo@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

I was referring to this which started it all.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 months ago

Here is the code in question. Basically, it's a source-available, but not FOSS internal SDK, with the following language:

The password manager SDK is not intended for public use and is not supported by Bitwarden at this stage. It is solely intended to centralize the business logic and to provide a single source of truth for the internal applications. As the SDK evolves into a more stable and feature complete state we will re-evaluate the possibility of publishing stable bindings for the public. The password manager interface is unstable and will change without warning.

So I think the "bug" here is in not linking the original repo in the NPM package, and there's a decent chance that this internal SDK will become FOSS in the future once it stabilizes. That said, it's currently not FOSS, but it's too early IMO to determine whether Bitwarden is moving in a non-FOSS direction, or if they're just trying to keep things simple while they do some heavy refactoring to remove redundancy across apps.

Given their past, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I'll be making sure I have regular backups in case things change.

[-] cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Notepad.exe

Its open source now right?

this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024

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