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wmal | 2 years ago
Bitwarden is not free as in speech, as it requires me to register with Bitwarden, Inc and get a license key to be able to self host. Also, then it uses some closed cloud services.
As for the free as in beer - this is more nuanced, but I still think it is far from free. For individuals - hosting something that requires 2-4 GB of RAM [1] is definitely not free. For companies - hosting something that doesn’t include SSO is pointless. The Bitwarden source available license, that includes SSO, does not allow production use [2], and requires a paid subscription instead.
BTW I completely understand the reasons to not open source everything. What I don’t understand is: why not use the source available Bitwarden license for the entire server codebase?
[1]: https://bitwarden.com/help/install-on-premise-linux/
[2]: https://github.com/bitwarden/server/blob/master/LICENSE_FAQ....
skjoldr|2 years ago
That is not the right understanding of the term "free" because the code is completely open-source and you can remove the parts that have to do with registration and enterprise features yourself without breaking the license agreement. You would have to maintain such a fork on your own though. It would be easier if Bitwarden Inc. themselves would maintain a completely open-sourced version and an open core version with non-free parts and registration, but they are not obligated to do so.