this post was submitted on 15 May 2026
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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.

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[–] godsammitdam@lemmy.zip 14 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Has Vaultwarden said anything yet? I imagine that, if necessary, given that bitwarden's client is still open, at the point they choose to try and close it, we, the users, can fork it and establish it for vaultwarden, correct? Or, maybe even the vaultwarden team will think about forking it themselves and making a light client as well to pair with the current server.

But Vaultwarden can exist without "leeching" they just haven't needed to yet. That's more symbiotic than parasitic. The parasite class just took over Bitwarden after all.

[–] german@pawb.social 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Not to my knowledge. As far as forks go, that’s true. However, Vaultwarden would need to become an independent team, and even if they don’t take over maintaining the client, someone else would need to become independent. While it can work, it can also lead to very nasty, longstanding bugs or security issues due to scale, budget, and effort. I see this a lot with Apple apps for example - smaller developers understandably don’t want to deal with Apple’s crap and costs, and everyone suffers in the end.

If you look at the current state of the cybersecurity world, it’s not kind to open-source developers. AI-generated BS is dredging up vulnerabilities on all sides. So security is also a big concern. Someone like Bitwarden has a lot of budget to swing.

Vaultwarden itself is incredibly good, but not perfect:

https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-26012.

[–] godsammitdam@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

You're right. And that's why more of us need to contribute and spread the word of projects to support them.

Honestly, FOSS is our last bastion against this consumerist hellscape. I'm working on learning to build my own discord-like front end on matrix specifically for gaming. But I'm just one guy. We've all gotta pick where we place our effort and support those around us similarly.

Vaultwarden taking over bitwarden, should they shut doen as open source, I think would be entirely worthy. But it might need more people to either help vaultwarden or maintain it on their own, you're right.

To me, seeing and learning about all of these projects gives me hope. All of these people and communities working to build things out of passion and dedication, because they care and want to provide value to others. No profit motive necessary. We just need to be there to support them as we've tied capital to our survival currently.

[–] quips@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 minutes ago

What is your matrix front end called?

[–] german@pawb.social 1 points 1 hour ago

True dat. The more people know every corporation, even the most “wholesome chungus Reddit karma 100” ones ONLY care about squeezing profits out of you, the better off we’re going to be in the future.

Check out and contribute to gomuks. It’s the go-to power user Matrix client as I’ve learned. I recently developed a theme for it to make it look more like Cinny, which itself is a bit of a Discord UI Clone. I don’t actually use gomuks, but it really needed a nice theme.

[–] deadcade@lemmy.deadca.de 2 points 1 hour ago

Hoping for another Moonlight/Sunshine moment! Already running Vaultwarden, rbw, and Keyguard. Just need a simple FOSS browser extension for autofill and editing entries.

For context, Moonlight was created first as a FOSS Nvidea gamestream client. Then Sunshine was created as a FOSS server implementation. Later, Nvidia dropped "official" support, now the two projects are a FOSS stack built atop a formerly proprietary protocol.

[–] youcantreadthis@quokk.au -1 points 17 minutes ago

Everyone who used and shilled them deserves thus lol

[–] cow@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

rbw is an unofficial CLI client which works with vault warden.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 1 points 1 hour ago

I guess that explains the transition to AI coding as well

[–] sloppy_diffuser@sh.itjust.works 13 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] blarth@thelemmy.club 21 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] german@pawb.social 8 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

They also haven’t addressed the removal of inclusion and transparency from their goals.

EDIT: They did. They said it’s “less of a priority”. The article I shared has been updated. I smell corporate bullshit though. “Oversight” this, “priority shift” that, they’d have to work hard to gain any trust back.

[–] Fmstrat@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Vaultwarden can't exist without "leeching" off of Bitwarden.

Why not? No reason mobile apps and browser extensions can't be forked.

[–] RonnyZittledong@lemmy.world 116 points 6 hours ago (4 children)

Jesus, I'm tired of switching password managers.

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 29 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

KeePassXC + KeePassDX is probably the best option, with the downside of no way to sync easily (syncthing is probably the best option there)

I might switch back at some point, been getting frustrated with the bitwarden extension performance always being so poor.

[–] german@pawb.social 1 points 2 hours ago

Merge conflicts are a concern for KeePass, especially for those that don’t want to resolve them. Sync is difficult. AFAIK this is a very common issue with Syncthing setups.

Also, the portability from Bitwarden to KP leaves a bit to be desired, though that’s probably 90% on BW.

[–] tremble5218@programming.dev 2 points 2 hours ago

Rclone with any cloud provider is another great option that's seldom mentioned. I posted my setup as a comment on another post. You may find it here - https://programming.dev/comment/23849767

[–] Speculater@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

I just got Bit warden this year! Gah. Where are we jumping?

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 1 points 48 minutes ago

Vaultwarden

[–] testaccount789@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 hours ago

Full circle to sticky notes on monitor.

[–] slate@sh.itjust.works 21 points 5 hours ago (19 children)

KeePass isn't going anywhere. They're also dragging their feet on passkey support, so you might go with KeepassXC.

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[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (6 children)

This is why corporate promises can never be trusted, because a new CEO can change those promises on a whim.

It's part of why despite being interested in Beeper, I never signed up for it because I had questions about if those privacy promises they made would be kept if they sold to a bigger company... which they eventually did.

On the plus side Bitwarden already made an official open source self-hosted version, which can be forked and/or return to the community developed Vaultwarden roots.

Meanwhile KeepassXC keeps on chugging along.

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[–] Shortstack@reddthat.com 60 points 6 hours ago

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?

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 46 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

I think the original title was more helpful because it shows that this is a recent development. Maybe you can add "new CEO"?

Bitwarden scrubs ‘Always free’ and ‘Inclusion’ values from its website as longtime execs step down

In February, longtime CEO Michael Crandell moved to an advisory role, according to LinkedIn, with no announcement from the company. His replacement, Michael Sullivan, former CEO of both Acquia and Insightsoftware, touts his experience with “all facets of mergers and acquisitions” on his own LinkedIn page, including experience working with leading private equity firms.

CFO Stephen Morrison also left Bitwarden in April, replaced by former InVision CEO Michael Shenkman. Both Crandell and Morrison joined the company in 2019. Kyle Spearrin, who started Bitwarden as a fun hobby project in 2015, remains the company’s CTO.

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