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Bitwarden is an integrated open source password management solution for individuals, teams, and business organizationsbitwarden.com
Unofficial Bitwarden compatible server written in Rust, formerly known as bitwarden_rs - GitHub - dani-garcia/vaultwarden: Unofficial Bitwarden compatible server written in Rust, formerly known as ...GitHub
If you don't like Bitwarden or their use of the word "free" on the free planThat's not a free plan. It is a freemium plan.
Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium," is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical (offline) goods that expand the functionality of the free version of the software.[1][2] This business model has been used in the software industry since the 1980s. A subset of this model used by the video game industry is called free-to-play.
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I think the prices are for storage and support?
"Free" refers to the libre licence of the software itself, you don't have to use the developers' services at all.
Then I wonder why not link to that? Also, the word "free" is so confusing here.
In this context, it means free as in you are allowed to download, distribute, alter the software.
The prices are for hosting and support labour, not for the software.
You don't have to use their hosting or their support if you don't want to.
I understand the context behind FOS, but the wording is confusing, so much so that I suspect many, including @FediFollows are confusing in this case the Bitwarden client/server software that is Open Source, with the services that they provide. Else they should have directly link to the Github page.
We have to be careful of such muddying of the software waters. Many companies do this on purpose so we must not be naive. ;)
The "free" plan lacks certain features such as:
Google and the like use such schemes too, and provide a limited version of their software to then gain more paid subscribers. How is Bitwarden different in that regards? I would not call Youtube, Gmail, Google Photos and the like free. They are paid services + freemium accounts + ad-based access and such. But they are clearly not free, you trade something for these services: currency, data, attention (via ads).
If you are interested, you can also check out a recent article from our CEO on this issue: https://bitwarden.com/blog/defining-and-sustaining-value-for-bitwarden-users/
And let me know what you think.
The FOSS discussion is definitely a big one, with proponents on both sides of the equation.
Defining and sustaining value for Bitwarden users | Bitwarden Blog
bitwarden.comYou are saying:But the "free" plan only has "Bitwarden Send for direct encrypted sharing" for Text and not for files; the "Two-step Login" feature is missing options such as "YubiKey, FIDO2, Duo"; missing "Encrypted File Attachments", missing "Bitwarden Authenticator (TOTP)". So the free version is for sure not "fully featured". Am I correct to say that?
You see after writing several books about corruption, looking at the software world too, and broken promises. After a decade of seeing endless examples of companies promising this or that, I find it so hard to believe any words coming from a company. Here's the basic why:
If I sell tomatoes, I can never afford to tell people to go to the other shop because they have better and cheaper tomatoes. I will lose customers...
In other words, you are selling Bitwarden subscriptions. You need to keep on doing that by all means, else (unfortunately) you can go bankrupt. This is an entanglement I personally cannot ignore nor should anyone else do. I have used a similar service in terms of the marketing approach: Standard Notes. They also have a strong "manifesto". And yet they started to make it harder for others to self host because they were losing money from self-hosters providing free Standard Notes services for the public.
If you made it more and more easy to self-host Bitwarden and more and more would self host and provide free (not freemium) access to the public, you are in danger of going bankrupt. And this truly sucks and I can never use words like "grow sustainably".
I truly hope you understand my points here.
I am also concerned that in the future you may add more features that are necessary, but only for the paid subscriptions. I've seen this before.
We all due respect, I do not trust Bitwarden and their future plans, their promises and approach. Like I do not for pretty much any company out there. I've seen this scenario play many times. It is fine, we can leave it as such and I hope you prove me wrong!
Please take my criticism as constructive. I am all for providing free access for people, for all kinds of services. We provide over 20 at https://trom.tf/ and we do so because of the FOSS community.
And its a free tier within this freemium model. If you are satisfied with what it offers, namely unlimited pwd storage for all your devices, then you'll never pay. If that promise is broken, then yes complain.
We should not use the baby brain for these. We know, of course, that this freemium business model is meant to lure in customers, deceive at times, and so forth. That's why many companies they provide "free" access, to get you to buy the "premium" ones.
Look, I *really* appreciate the passion and perseverance with which you advocate different, better ways to move forward.
But I think if you are honest your persistence on this thread mostly stems from your advocacy of the concept of "trade-free" versus other uses of "free" that do not match it. As an activist spreading the msg.
Bitwarden may be a bit of a nitpicking case, but I started by suggesting to @FediFollows that the way they wrote the post is confusing, to me and am sure to others. And to understand the misconceptions and abuse of the concept of "free" that I think Bitwarden is at least a little bit guilty of.
I am someone who tests thousands of Open Source apps for our TROMjaro distro, and I am tired of seeing so many "marketing" strategies hidden in a sneaky way, behind many apps. At times you don't realize that you are using a freemium version of an app up until later on, and it is truly bothering. Once I have edited this big book in a PDF editor that was "free and open source" and I had installed it via the software manager, and when I wanted to save the PDF it injected a watermark on all pages asking me to pay to have that removed. I've seen this happen countless of times.
In any case, I appreciate this comment:Being extremely passionate about something is a double edge sword, on one hand you will be very vocal and active and this is very important, on the other hand you can be biased. I try not to be biased, and if I am I hope others will expose that.
It is frustrating to see the shenanigans all around us. I just feel that the use of the model, doesn't necessarily guarantee its abuse. And if it is abused it is not inherent to the model, but to the flaws of the people behind it. Any form of criticism is then warranted, but based on their behavior.
Maybe Bitwarden could improve and highlight import/export, migration support from free tier to self-hosted.
In other words, if you live in an environment that is competitive, you'll be competitive, and perhaps egocentric, and greedy.
In any case, I always try to never blame people, but to look at how the env is shaping their behavior. The people behind Bitwarden should understand that I do not blame them in any way.
Let's take Matrix/Element for example. Matrix is the server, Element is the client (chat). https://matrix.org/ is the main server website. They separate the two quite a bit. I cannot see prices on the matrix website for instance. On the same website they encourage the use of any other client not just Element - https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now/ . Which tells me that they are more honest and less biased towards their own client.
On the Element website however (the client) https://element.io they provide paid for services as in "hosting and setup - services", but as far as I can tell they do not touch the software. No "minus features". This means they do not use the software as the product, but services. Much much better. Less entanglement. Actually even if you use their default app https://app.element.io/#/login they make it easy for you to add your own matrix server and login with that. I do not see this as an option for Bitwarden https://vault.bitwarden.com/#/login
Overall Matrix + Element provide open source software (server/client) and sell some services without removing features from the software itself. Thus they are prone to less bias I would argue. Maybe that's why they let you use their Client with any Server, directly from their own website. And perhaps they can do all of this because they get enough funds from all sort of sources, so they don't have to sell that much.
It is not me doing that, they provide a service that fits perfectly fine in what we describe today as freemium.
What I asked is for them to admin that their "free" plan is freemium, and for others who talk about such pieces of software to differentiate between the software itself that can be called "free and open source" and the services that these companies provide, that are trade-based / freemiums.
Unfortunately in this world this is the case, and I scream for more than a decade now how this is insanity. We have plenty of resources to provide for all, for free. It is an unfortunate situation but I am acutely aware of it and trying to showcase ways of doing it better via our TROM project.
If I go to the website there's a Free Plan that is hosted by #Bitwarden and there's 2 direct links from the front page that lead me to their open source projects. It is very clear what is paid and what is not. Everything is very informative giving comparison of what I get, and on the Open Source page it is explained how I can self-host.
Exemplary FOSS biz
There are healthy FOSS models where developers erect a company and earn a living from it, right? May they not have a project/product site where they state how they sustain themselves from their work? May others not point to it saying "they are free open source, and this is their website"?
I think the way the original toot was phrased was totally okay and not leading confusion.
You seem to say that as soon as the word "free" is in the text, you are only allowed to link to the GH repo.
What if repo README only held dev compile instruction, and the site offered full documents, transparency on offerings, accessible, easy-to-navigate.
If I tell people that Nextcloud is a free Google Drive alternative I'll make sure not to link to their Enterprise Business Plan. It is a nice way of keeping yourself honest and not confuse anyone. I would not direct people to MegaSync and say "Megasync is a free open source file hosting for computers and mobile devices.". Their client is Open Source and even if their server would also be, it is misleading.
Simple, link to the page where they provide that "free open source" part of their project. Regardless if it is on their website or github.
The original toot had separate parts to convey the info:
1) Bitwarden is a free open source password manager for computers and mobile devices
2) You can follow their official accounts at
3) Their website is at https://bitwarden.com
As a person who doesn't strongly grasp what FOSS is I would still like to start on the landing page that explains what #Bitwarden, then drill-down.
Bitwarden Open Source Password Manager | Bitwarden
bitwarden.comAnd there is no reason to make things confusing:
Bitwarden provides a client/server software that is open source, thus anyone can self-host it. Here you can read more https://bitwarden.com/open-source/
Bitwarden also provides freemium + paid-for services here https://bitwarden.com/pricing/
Done. Easy. 😀
@FediFollows @humanetech @bitwarden
@FediFollows @humanetech @bitwarden
@FediFollows @humanetech @bitwarden
I gave an example of Standard Notes. They open sourced their client/server yet they are selling subscriptions via their servers. They also limit, like Bitwarden, the "free" subscription. So they provide freemium accounts + paid for.
Because many started to use their software and self host + provide free (completely free not freemium) access to the public, Standard Notes made it much more difficult to self host and I had the "opportunity" to talk to them about this since we were also self hosting. And indeed they admitted the decisions were mostly for their financial gains since so many were providing Standard Notes for free, and that takes away from their profits.
That's the catch here and I am not accusing these people really. The developers need financial support indeed. But please do understand that when they sell their product, even if it is FOSS, their decisions will be biased. They are under pressure.
So eventually we did not host Standard Notes anymore since it became more and more difficult to do so.
I hope you see my point.
https://codeberg.org/jonatasbaldin/delightful-libre-hosters/issues/18
WebApe
Codeberg.orgThank you for the submission tho, I appreciate it.
@FediFollows @humanetech @jonatasbaldin @bitwarden
I remember when Google Photos offered unlimited storage, to then 2 years later stopping that and now millions of users had lots of photos stored there, so what would they do? Well pay for it to be able to keep on using that "unlimited" service. My mother was in that sort of situation and then we felt forced to pay for it eventually.