@brjsp thanks again for submitting the concern here. We have made some adjustments to how the SDK code is organized and packaged to allow you to build and run the app with only GPL/OSI licenses included. The sdk-internal package references in the clients now come from a new sdk-internal repository, which follows the licensing model we have historically used for all of our clients (see LICENSE_FAQ.md for more info). The sdk-internal reference only uses GPL licenses at this time. If the reference were to include Bitwarden License code in the future, we will provide a way to produce multiple build variants of the client, similar to what we do with web vault client builds.
The original sdk repository will be renamed to sdk-secrets, and retains its existing Bitwarden SDK License structure for our Secrets Manager business products. The sdk-secrets repository and packages will no longer be referenced from the client apps, since that code is not used there.
This appears at least okay on the surface. The clients’ dependency on sdk-internal didn’t change but that’s okay now because they have licensed sdk-internal as GPL.
The sdk-secret will remain proprietary but that’s a separate product (Secrets Manager) and will apparently not be used in the regular clients. Who knows for how long though because, if you read carefully, they didn’t promise that it will not be used in the future.
The fact that they had ever intended to make parts of the client proprietary without telling anyone and attempted to subvert the GPL while doing so still remains utterly unacceptable. They didn’t even attempt to apologise for that.
Bitwarden has now landed itself in the category of software that I would rather move away from and cannot wholeheartedly recommend anymore. That’s pretty sad.
Not trusting a company that has been quietly undermining open source builds of their android client and being cagey + using guarded and laconic PR speak on this is not fallacious thinking, it is just recognizing behaviors and knowing why a company would be doing that. These companies hire people to craft responses and otherwise manage their “community”, and providing no assurances of permanently open clients when they tried to pull this is an intentional omission.
I hate to say this, but there’s no real assurances of permanently open clients from anyone. Also, their client is still open, and if they do drop the OSS model, people can just fork it and still have a working client (or fork an old version that meets whatever standards they have).
But unless we can prove that they have actually done something ethically wrong, I don’t see why the internet feels the need to waste energy creating villains from conjecture.
Of course you inherently cannot trust a private company to keep their product open, including open core models. In that situation everyone using or contributing should be making a gamble: that if they go too far the project will be forked, the company will cut its community in two, and the fotk will go on to be decently successful as a community project.
Their inability to do the right PR things is just a signal that they can’t be bothered with the facade that is useful for them to maintain community support and FOSS nerd marketing for their product.
Re: ethics, they are no longer on F-Droid because they tried to get this in under the radar and include non-free code in builds. Instead of fixing that problem they made their own repo.
Bitwarden will likely eventually destroy their FOSS model for profit-seeking, it is just a matter of when. This is how these things work.
…or they’re just bad at PR. It’s not a skill everyone has.
…or they made an honest mistake and don’t care to put it back on F-droid for reasons to which we are not privy. I bring up these counter-examples not as a way to point out where I’m right and you’re wrong, but to point out that there are other candidate explanations, and it’s not justified to infer that malfeasance is the only likely possibility.
I also understand why you would cynically think that Bitwarden might succumb to Capitalism—I too live in a late-stage-capitalism country—but that’s not a forgone conclusion, and I say again that we don’t need to be imagining villains when there’s plenty of objectively real ones at which to point a finger already.