Bitwarden Dual License Model

In any case Bitwarden will now be put on the list of things I will need to watch its development more closely in case this goes south.

Edit: I just saw in the comments that it was noted that it will be decided on case by case basis on what gets developed. Thats good for now I guess, yet the other questions remain open. (Ig it implicitly answers some other questions e.g. the self-hosting one too, but think of them more in the long run)

While this might seem benign, Bitwarden would be well advised to review in detail what happened with the recent Coinkite fiasco. The security playing field is basically identical and the extremely real (and dramatically realized) risk is basically identical.

In summary: CoinKite ColdCard was also published open software but without a FOSS license. This, in turn, eliminated any possibility and motivation for the community to fork, audit, and review their software. This, in turn, allowed a, frankly, idiotic bug to fester. This in turn led to users’/customers’ loss of a few million dollars of value to an almost trivial exploit that can’t even be classified as a proper hack. Besides insane value loss, Coinkite is effectively dead as an enterprise and its principles doxed and will remain shunned the rest of their lives (deservedly so; I accidentally know one of them as a previous work colleague — not a bad guy, but this is deserved).

This is exactly where Bitwarden is heading now.

This seems like a great reason for me to discontinue my Bitwarden subscription. Bitwarden is easily the best platform out there for password management but this is the obvious result of venture capital influence and attorneys.