If that wasn’t on purpose than that was a big fuckup. I was sometimes thinking about testing Bitwarden but with this volatile license situation I’m not interested anymore.
You can do what you like, but the change is sane, and they’ve now separated their Secrets Manager, which is their proprietary software for businesses, from their primary client, which is GPL.
IMO, the internet is doing that thing again where they invent villains.
tbh I don’t think any of the 2 sides here could know that their opinion is the truth. we can’t say that it’s intentional, but can’t either that it’s just a honest mistake, so far everyone saying that just sounds to apply wishful thinking. let’s see what happens in a few years, and then we may be able to judge future incidents better.
I wish it’s just pananoia though I think that statement only in the skeptical realm, and I wish nothing substantial changed. I’m hosting vaultwarden currently for my family. To them the app on their phone is paramount. However, it is proven some will go that route, like Android. After all, a for -profit company goal is to make money.
There is a risk and a probability one need to evaluate. Nothing wrong to plan for an exit, but abandoning the software right now is simply overreaction.
As long as I can use it with a self-hosted server with features they expect, I’m don’t think I will move away from it.
It is not always I want to write this long to explain what in my thoughts. The conclusion remains the same as my first comment.
I always maintain a healthy dose of skepticism on anything. Not that they would do it again and it is highly probable that’s only a mistake but no one can tell except Bitwarden themselves. However, all the outsiders like us can only take their statement at face value and some skepticism will keeps eyes sharp.
If this were done by MS or Apple, who lack any shred of respect left, sure. If it were a material change on how the code works, certainly it would be most concerning. But what happened was blown entirely out of proportion for who Bitwarden has been and how they’ve acted in the past. They are still ethically very solid. And it was an immaterial change in the build tools, that could very well have been neglectful or accidental.
You are correct, but the way people reacted is certainly conditioning from the rug-pulling enshittification going on daily in the tech world. (What are we all using instead of redis, again?)
“I only read the headline and the comments from the threads a week ago, I am truly disappointed in Bitwarden’s stance against FOSS as I’ve misunderstood it.”
That’s a poor understanding of the situation. Nothing in the licensing changed. The SDK has always been the proprietary business to business secrets management product. The client integrates with and can use that SDK to provide the paid service to businesses. The client and the server side management of password has always been and still is FOSS.
This was apparently an accidental change in the build code (not the client code, just the building scripts) that required the inclusion of the SDK to build the client when actually it has never and doesn’t really need any of that code. It prevented building the client without accepting the SDK license. Which it shouldn’t.
This was fixed and some things will be put in place so it doesn’t happen again. Nothing in the licensing scheme changed, at all. This is not a catastrophic enshittification event. A Dev was just being lazy and forgot to check the dependencies on the build chain before their commit.
Thank you for bringing some sanity. I get that people experience capitalist enshittification on a regular basis, but sometimes people make honest mistakes.
If that wasn’t on purpose than that was a big fuckup. I was sometimes thinking about testing Bitwarden but with this volatile license situation I’m not interested anymore.
You can do what you like, but the change is sane, and they’ve now separated their Secrets Manager, which is their proprietary software for businesses, from their primary client, which is GPL.
IMO, the internet is doing that thing again where they invent villains.
If they tried once, there
willmay be a second, but more subtle.That’s called “paranoia.” You’re inventing conspiracy theories.
tbh I don’t think any of the 2 sides here could know that their opinion is the truth. we can’t say that it’s intentional, but can’t either that it’s just a honest mistake, so far everyone saying that just sounds to apply wishful thinking. let’s see what happens in a few years, and then we may be able to judge future incidents better.
I wish it’s just pananoia though I think that statement only in the skeptical realm, and I wish nothing substantial changed. I’m hosting vaultwarden currently for my family. To them the app on their phone is paramount. However, it is proven some will go that route, like Android. After all, a for -profit company goal is to make money.
There is a risk and a probability one need to evaluate. Nothing wrong to plan for an exit, but abandoning the software right now is simply overreaction.
As long as I can use it with a self-hosted server with features they expect, I’m don’t think I will move away from it.
This is a much more level take than your first comment.
It is not always I want to write this long to explain what in my thoughts. The conclusion remains the same as my first comment.
I always maintain a healthy dose of skepticism on anything. Not that they would do it again and it is highly probable that’s only a mistake but no one can tell except Bitwarden themselves. However, all the outsiders like us can only take their statement at face value and some skepticism will keeps eyes sharp.
They didn’t try anything. Stop inventing. Go read an actual article on the subject instead of feeding the scarebait frenzy.
What makes you think this was intentional?
If this were done by MS or Apple, who lack any shred of respect left, sure. If it were a material change on how the code works, certainly it would be most concerning. But what happened was blown entirely out of proportion for who Bitwarden has been and how they’ve acted in the past. They are still ethically very solid. And it was an immaterial change in the build tools, that could very well have been neglectful or accidental.
You are correct, but the way people reacted is certainly conditioning from the rug-pulling enshittification going on daily in the tech world. (What are we all using instead of redis, again?)
“I only read the headline and the comments from the threads a week ago, I am truly disappointed in Bitwarden’s stance against FOSS as I’ve misunderstood it.”
Something tells me you’re the kind of person who sees a car turn the same direction as you twice and starts freaking out that you’re being followed…
That’s a poor understanding of the situation. Nothing in the licensing changed. The SDK has always been the proprietary business to business secrets management product. The client integrates with and can use that SDK to provide the paid service to businesses. The client and the server side management of password has always been and still is FOSS.
This was apparently an accidental change in the build code (not the client code, just the building scripts) that required the inclusion of the SDK to build the client when actually it has never and doesn’t really need any of that code. It prevented building the client without accepting the SDK license. Which it shouldn’t.
This was fixed and some things will be put in place so it doesn’t happen again. Nothing in the licensing scheme changed, at all. This is not a catastrophic enshittification event. A Dev was just being lazy and forgot to check the dependencies on the build chain before their commit.
Thank you for bringing some sanity. I get that people experience capitalist enshittification on a regular basis, but sometimes people make honest mistakes.
Bullshit. Developers never make mistakes. N.E.V.R.
Okay, I actually laughed at that one! I guess us QA folks can just pack up and go home 😆
If it looks like a developer made a mistake, it was actually the product owner. Or the user. Or cosmic rays. But never the developer.
And, amazingly, someone still downvoted you.
Idiots downvoting amazes you? Then there’s a whole world of amazement awaiting you!
Thanks for the summary, it adds great clarity to seeing how it could happen
This statement is incorrect. The SDK had specific source files placed exclusively under the SDK license, and the remainder of the repository dual licensed between GPL 3 and the SDK license. So the licensing scheme did change.
See also: https://github.com/bitwarden/sdk-internal/blob/main/LICENSE
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