In the latest episode of “they will always sell you out” - they sold you out! Who would’ve thought.
Hoping for a good alternative client to appear, the writing is on the wall. Vaultwarden can’t exist without “leeching” off of Bitwarden.
Move to KeePassXC or its recent LLM-free fork while you still can, because at some point Bitwarden is going to try to go closed-source again.
Oh crap, how’s KeePass got an LLM involved‽ Time to look into this now…
I did find https://codeberg.org/ChiPass/ChiPass , but it looks like a very new project.
Yeah, I’m no fan of slopcoding either, but this policy addresses those who contribute AI-generated code; it is most certainly not “our devs are shipping AI slopcode”.
Seems a lot here missed this part:
All code submissions go through a rigorous review process regardless of the development workflow or submitter.
Linus Torvalds does the same thing with the Linux kernel. He gets AI-generated slopcode submissions all the time. They’re reviewed by real people, and like most submissions Linus gets, sloppy work is rejected, AI and human alike.
but it’s so much easier to grab torches and pitchforks than to read an announcement
…actually seems quite reasonable.
very much so.
That’s troubling, I don’t like what this portends.
The new CEOs background especially suggests they’re spiffing up the company for a later sellout, why else would they pick a merger specialist for the role?
Clue me in on why vaultwarden can’t exist without it?
It can, but vaultwarden, as it currently is, is an implementation of the server only. So if bitwarden decides to go closed source all the way, they’d haver to start either creating their own clients or fork the current bitwarden clients.
That’s fine. We just treat it as a fork from this point onwards.
Okay. You first.
I guess that explains the transition to AI coding as well
Ah shit. Here we go again!
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Enshitification coming right up!
i was just thinking this week with the passphrase addition how good bitwarden is and when will the other shoe drop. There it is.
Keepass (all variants and forks) has a passphrase generator, been built-in for years.
The writing is on the wall for BW, and has been for quite some time now.
https://bitwarden.com/pricing/
I kind of find the headline a bit disingenuous. However, if they do move to a non-free model, I’d still pay for it. I mean $1.65/Month USD. Sure, I don’t even have to think about it.
Yeah it’s not about not paying for me, it’s about being able to host my own with my protections and controls
That is totally awesome and cool bro. You’ll never hear me throw shade on someone for charting their own course in life or choosing a different path. In fact, to drop a little relevant Hendrix up in here:
“I’m the one who has to die when it’s time for me to die. So, let me live my life the way I want.”
As long as my life doesn’t interfere with your life, we’ll be just jippity jippity. Rock on! Git sum! It’s a big world. We can all coexist.
Funny thing is I clicked the link and “Always free.” was gone. Refreshed the page and it was back. Definitely something going on.
<shrug> It was there when I went and took a screen shot without refreshing.
yeah fuck that… fuck subscriptions ALL OF THEM. fucn these companies, ALL OF THEM.
stop giving any of these pricks any slack. none of them deserve it, nor money.
today it’s 1.65… tomorrow it’s 4.99… next week it’s 12.99… stop being a mindless sheep giving them any sort of leeway. you’re enabling the scammers to literally scam you more, and more and more.
I’m relocating all my shit right now because we’ll… fuck em. I am loyal to NO COMPANY. none of them deserve anything but bankruptcy at a minimum.
I am totally in line with not agreeing with everything being a subscription. And I absolutely dont agree with subscription creep.
So I minimize what I pay for. And let me say, in no means am I defending the change in Bitwarden here. I would never.
It isn’t a realistic expectation to expect any hosted service to be free. Especially in capitalism. Someone will come along and fuck with pricing.
Not everyone has the time, knowledge, or finances to fund self hosting everything.
But to automatically assume everyone is a sheep for using a service that benefits them is a bit of a jump.
Yes, I myself value privacy, security, and the merits of self hosting as much as I can with my resources. And I have had conversations with people on these topics, and there are the folk that lack the understanding of the importance of the hill many of the folk like me stand on. So I have seen the wide spectrum of people who pay for services.
Wild take dude.
yAlL aRe ShEeP blah blah blah…
today it’s 1.65… tomorrow it’s 4.99… next week it’s 12.99… stop being a mindless sheep giving them any sort of leeway. you’re enabling the scammers to literally scam you more, and more and more.
‘Mindless sheep’. That’s hilarious. But I get it. Nobody likes to pay for shit.
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Hmm nice profile pic
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It’s not ‘out of touch’. It’s paying for (if it comes to that) a service that houses all of my business accounts, investment accounts, personal accounts, etc, and all with a pretty damn good track record. As with any technology, you must constantly evaluate it to see if what you are spending is justified for the service you are receiving. If at such time I feel the service isn’t worth the price, then sure. As of now, it’s not really an issue to me.
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It’s not acknowledging that part which seems out of touch.
I assure you, I am fully cognizant of what for-profit corporations do. It’s one of the reasons I turned off the TV over two decades ago. There just wasn’t any ROI for me.
Baaaaaaa.
Man, I tell you, I wish I could live in a fantasy world where everything is free.
Not sure about “everything”, but plenty of password managers are.
There are a handful of things I do not self host.
- arr stack
- password managers
- anything financial
I’ve cut down my subscriptions by a lot over the past few years, and I’ve gotten very close to what I consider a minimum. Whenever possible, I like to buy outright.
However, surely you can understand how not every product can function as a one time purchase. For something like a password manager, they are providing an ongoing service. They are storing and serving your data.
You can self host, sure, and I’m doing a lot of that lately. But not everyone has the capacity or desire to.
All that said, this leadership shakeup is concerning and I think I’ll be migrating to Proton, since I already have a Duo plan.
You don’t need to self-host at all! Daisy-chain your needed files via Syncthing and Syncthing-Fork. That’s literally what I do with KeePassXC and KeePassDX, keeping everything offline.
I am confused. Aren’t their clients open source? How many milliseconds will take till 100s folks will fork it?
Their server is useless and Vaultwarden is already a superior option
While I agree that they are a “at risk” company, I don’t think the software itself is at risk
Glad I started using Vaultwarden a while back. Just need to find better apps for android and Firefox I guess because I’m guessing they’re going to try to break compatibility.
vauktwarden needs bitwarden though
I mean at this point in its evolution, what parts does vaultwarden rely on from bitwarden? The clients, but there are alternatives like keyguard for Android devices. What other layers does it rely on, I actually have been trying to figure this out myself.
They responded on reddit and walked some of it back as an “oversight”: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitwarden/comments/1tdvnh7/comment/olznwcv/. Allegedly, I’m too lazy to verify.
A change that would require intent to make is not a mistake or oversight.
This sucks. I committed to Bitwarden years ago and now am going to have to switch before they lock me in the garden.
They also haven’t addressed the removal of inclusion and transparency from their goals.
Sad. Replaced everything with keepassxc + syncthing
All hail the new Chief Enshittification Officer!
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters IoT Internet of Things for device controllers SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access VPN Virtual Private Network
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 20 acronyms.
[Thread #295 for this comm, first seen 16th May 2026, 03:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I fucking knew this would happen years ago. Something always smelled “off” about BW.
namely the VC funding and the huge resource hungry clients to me
you saw that something on the internet will go to shit in a couple of years? speak to us, oracle! :)
Right? Lmao who would’ve thought??
Vaultwarden here I come
BW news dropped, so you’re going to move to something that still requires the BW app?
Circular logic, friend. Ditch everything related to BW. Move to a truly open password manager like KeePass (including its various forks).
No, KeePass. Fully open source, no cloud involved in any way, unless you want something to sync your data (the server only ever sees your encrypted database - all encryption and decryption is done locally). You can also host your own sync server using any of a variety of different protocols.
Ok thanks for the heads up
Yep. Seconding this!
KeePass + Syncthing is the best.
Back up the database(s) regularly. (Syncthing can also retain
xnumber of versions and things like that, but also do your own 3-2-1 backups.)You can use something as simple as a Pi, or an old laptop, or even an old phone if you get creative, as an always-on syncthing server to keep them synchronized. KeePassXC even has a fancy integration with Firefox, so all you gotta do is unlock your database and click autofill on websites.
I use KeePass + KeeAnywhere. KeeAnywhere will sync with a wide variety of cloud storage providers. Or your own S3 data bucket server (can be self hosted or on Amazon), if you prefer. Does pretty much the same thing though with versioning. Auto filling in Firefox is done with KeePassHttp-connector on the Firefox side and the KeePassHTTP plugin in KeePass. Similar to what you describe.
Yup, been doing this combo for 5-6 years now.
I use KeePassXC on desktop and KeePassDX on Android. No issues whatsoever.
I do have a NAS so that’s my “always on” device for Syncthing. Everything syncs up within like 10-15 seconds when a device connects.
I also use a key file as a pseudo 2FA that I keep on a flash drive, so you’d need my master password and my key file to unlock the database.
I hate to break the news but the issue with Bitwarden is that the client sucks total ass, and there are no drop in 3rd party replacements for the browser plugin.
Been running Vaultwarden for a while now and even though the sync implementation is nice and clean, it’s just not worth the end user experience.
This is really dumb when compared to literally every other password manager, open source and enterprise which does a much better job of actually being a password manager and not a glorified encrypted text file.
I’m eventually going to switch back to KeePassXC and just suggest setting a master password with Firefox’s builtin password manager for everyone else who just wants a painless user experience and not have to deal with syncing vaults.
