This concerns me quite a bit tbh. It feels like the standard: Open Source → Semi Opensource → Open Source discontinued Rugpull quite a few companies have been doing lately. I especially got hit by this with MinIO, so I’m quite careful what I use now because MinIO has been a huge pain and switching from Bitwarden would be too.
I both pay for Bitwarden (although I don’t use any premium features. I got it to support Bitwarden so it can continue being an open source project. With the price increase I was already considering cancelling as I don’t use the premium stuff and with this it gives me even more reason to do so) but I also have Vaultwarden instances self-hosted for various projects to work in teams. Both are essential to me and I want both to work equally well. I currently neither plan to switch my personal Bitwarden to self hosted nor would I ever consider moving my self hosted instances to your servers.
So my questions are:
- Are there any new features coming to the OSS version, or is it staying as is with everything new being in the commercial version?
- What would I lose out on by not using the commercial version now or in the future?
- How are you guaranteeing that self-hosting will remain effortless and will it remain possible for third-party teams like Vaultwarden to continue to use the protocol?
- What version does the Linux Flatpak store receive? Will it remain the open source version or the commercial one?
- Will e.g. a commercial browser addon remain compatible with a open source client? (E.g. With the biometric thingy?)
- How are you guaranteeing to us that such a Rugpull will not happen now or in the future?
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)