Password managers seem like a mature enough product with (now) enough of a reputation for periodic enshittification that forming a software engineering co-op for paid seamless hosting of a FOSS password manager seems viable. A company limited by constitution to equity only being ownable by people actively working there. Absent that guard the external investors will come knocking eventually, with an offer too good to refuse.
Agree. I was a long-time 1Password user and migrated to Apple Passwords.app for personal stuff. For work, I just use whatever they give me. Not my decision.
Vista Equity are the ones that bought Citrix in 2022, and ultimately the reason I stopped working there. Nothing good can come out of this, so I consider this a signal to start looking actively for alternatives to their cloud service.
I wonder.. for those of us who cannot self-host their own credential manager (for whatever reason)... what open-source cloud-synced options remain, if we exclude bitwarden?
As another vaultwarden user here, I think I'd welcome a community fork. Already there's been cases where some of my official bitwarden clients had compat issues with my vaultwarden server because the release schedules didn't align well. In a community fork, these sorts of things might be addressed better leading to more stability.
Of course, losing the sheer contribution power of all the paid engineers at bitwarden would mean development of new features could slow to a crawl. For something like a password manager, I think that's okay though.
Without knowing all this today I transitioned to 1password, something I didn't do lightly. But the UX of Bitwarden has been a bit too annoying, out of sync vaults, super complicated secret management, very bad sharing experience, hit and miss extension. After reading this I'm even more convinced by my decision.
Whether self-hosting stays viable long-term is the real question worth sitting with.
The brake on the worst case: self-hosting is a listed Enterprise feature that generates real revenue. Killing it upsets paying business customers. That matters. The catch: …
Let me ask a question. I am using Bitwarden at the moment, but I’ve been long looking into migrating to Apple’s built-in password manager. No complaints about Bitwarden on my side, but Apple stuff is just better integrated with the OS. However, two things stop me:
How can I export/backup passwords, such that I am not locked out of my accounts, if I no longer using Apple?
As far as I understand, the passwords are synced between my laptop and my phone. And I have a relatively weak passcode on the phone. While I am happy to lock my sensitive accounts behind my Mac’s login password, I don’t feel comfortable extending that to my phone. Is there some way to require extra auth for a subset of passwords? Or, otherwise, to have both convenience and security?
Yes, you can export the passwords as CSV. Ironically, I did so earlier this year to move from Passwords.app to Bitwarden when I switched away from iOS.
Ugh, I am also a Bitwarden user. The primary advantage for me is that I share accounts information with my sisters as we try to take care of our sick, aging parents while spread out across the world. Are there any other reasonable paid services with multiple shared accounts that I can use? So far Bitwarden has been a life saver for our coordination efforts. It would be really bad to lose it.
ahelwer | 7 hours ago
Password managers seem like a mature enough product with (now) enough of a reputation for periodic enshittification that forming a software engineering co-op for paid seamless hosting of a FOSS password manager seems viable. A company limited by constitution to equity only being ownable by people actively working there. Absent that guard the external investors will come knocking eventually, with an offer too good to refuse.
jiqiren | an hour ago
Agree. I was a long-time 1Password user and migrated to Apple Passwords.app for personal stuff. For work, I just use whatever they give me. Not my decision.
psafont | 7 hours ago
Vista Equity are the ones that bought Citrix in 2022, and ultimately the reason I stopped working there. Nothing good can come out of this, so I consider this a signal to start looking actively for alternatives to their cloud service.
subnut | 3 hours ago
I wonder.. for those of us who cannot self-host their own credential manager (for whatever reason)... what open-source cloud-synced options remain, if we exclude bitwarden?
dsr | 2 hours ago
If you have access to any kind of file syncing, then you can use a pass-compatible DB.
https://www.passwordstore.org/
evert | 9 hours ago
Pretty sad to read.
muvlon | 8 hours ago
As another vaultwarden user here, I think I'd welcome a community fork. Already there's been cases where some of my official bitwarden clients had compat issues with my vaultwarden server because the release schedules didn't align well. In a community fork, these sorts of things might be addressed better leading to more stability.
Of course, losing the sheer contribution power of all the paid engineers at bitwarden would mean development of new features could slow to a crawl. For something like a password manager, I think that's okay though.
jbaber | 5 hours ago
I was an early adopter because of the open sourceness. I'm very happy to pay. I don't want to bother self-hosting. It's a real pity.
Still, I'll just keep my regular exports going, ready to abandon ship when it really gets crummy.
marcecoll | 8 hours ago
Without knowing all this today I transitioned to 1password, something I didn't do lightly. But the UX of Bitwarden has been a bit too annoying, out of sync vaults, super complicated secret management, very bad sharing experience, hit and miss extension. After reading this I'm even more convinced by my decision.
greg_loscombe | 7 hours ago
This. The UX refresh was horrible.
zk | 3 hours ago
I hear this UX complaint a lot. I almost exclusively use bitwarden on mobile. I've never had anything bad to say about the mobile app's UX.
mk12 | 3 hours ago
This is LLM slop.
matklad | 7 hours ago
Let me ask a question. I am using Bitwarden at the moment, but I’ve been long looking into migrating to Apple’s built-in password manager. No complaints about Bitwarden on my side, but Apple stuff is just better integrated with the OS. However, two things stop me:
vaguelytagged | 7 hours ago
I believe you can import and export passwords as csv on macOS
lake | 6 hours ago
Yes, you can export the passwords as CSV. Ironically, I did so earlier this year to move from Passwords.app to Bitwarden when I switched away from iOS.
darth-cheney | 58 minutes ago
Ugh, I am also a Bitwarden user. The primary advantage for me is that I share accounts information with my sisters as we try to take care of our sick, aging parents while spread out across the world. Are there any other reasonable paid services with multiple shared accounts that I can use? So far Bitwarden has been a life saver for our coordination efforts. It would be really bad to lose it.
oceanhaiyang | 16 minutes ago
So it seems like for FOSS users we just wait and see?