this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2026
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Bitwarden Switches to Commercial License (community.bitwarden.com)
submitted 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) by Mustachius_Grumpius@thelemmy.club to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
93 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

RyanL Bitwarden Employee

Hello everyone!

Starting in the next release, the Bitwarden apps published to the various stores will be the commercially licensed builds. No action is needed, and the apps will work exactly as they do today.

Bitwarden remains committed to open source security and transparency
The GPLv3 OSS licensed version continues to be updated and published on GitHub
All current features are available in both versions
License details are on GitHub
Bitwarden remains committed to a robust, free forever plan for everyone

If you have any questions, please ask them in this thread. Thanks all!

EDIT:

Bitwarden is not going closed-source
You can still fork Bitwarden
No change to self-hosting, the licensing change affects those who are repackaging and reselling Bitwarden
The free plan is here to stay permanently
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[–] brave_lemmywinks@lemmy.world 8 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

What's the benefit for them to change the license?

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 hours ago

Money

[–] talkingpumpkin@lemmy.world 12 points 8 hours ago

What differences will exist between the two parallel versions?

Some future components will be published under the commercial license and will exist only in that build. Newly developed features will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis for which license applies to them.

source: the page linked by OP, https://community.bitwarden.com/t/published-version-update-in-app-stores/102750/4

[–] thr0w4w4y2@sh.itjust.works 29 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

commercial providers can’t fork and sell it and give nothing back to the OSS community.

[–] brave_lemmywinks@lemmy.world 17 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

So basically they were getting undercut by people reselling the same a services under a different name.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 10 hours ago

And not having to do R&D

[–] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 7 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

No, that would GPL. The benefit for them is that some features will be paid and won't be unlockable just by using Vaultwarden

[–] thr0w4w4y2@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

it literally says in the post that the license change affects companies who are repackaging and reselling bitwarden, but ok.

[–] nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

But this is the post by bitwarden, defending their decision. AKA marketing.

Can you explain how bitwarden can be "repackaged and resold", that would be stopped by that change?

Everybody can still fork/rename/publish the FOSS version which is continued to be available. Everybody can connect to vaultwarden....?

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 4 points 5 hours ago

Everybody can still fork/rename/publish the FOSS version

Yeah, but there's no guarantee the FOSS version will be the same as the closed one.

[–] Buckshot@programming.dev 6 points 7 hours ago

Yeah this only makes sense if the builds start diverging from the open source code, extra features that are closed source.