Concerns Raised Over Bitwarden Moving Further Away From Open-Source

[klh_io]

Who cares if they got "free marketing"? They literally give you the software for free. This is exactly the kind of entitled behavior that makes modern OSS authorship and maintenance suck.

I obviously care, otherwise I wouldn't be writing what I wrote. The involved companies also care, otherwise they wouldn't make it part of their marketing strategy with "Open Source" slapped all over their websites (when they were OSS). If they switch away from an OSS license, it's no longer OSS authorship and maintenance.

You act like this is some nefarious plan and I see no evidence with any of these companies that was the case. What I see is companies, often started by original authors of the software or closely related, getting into a bind and trying to walk back things. And it's their right to do so. Even if it was part of their plan... so what? You got a bunch of free code. They owe you nothing. Read the license.

Where in my message did I say (F)OSS maintainers/developers owe anyone anything? You seem confused - we are talking about a for-profit corporation. There are no contributors or maintainers, just employees.

I also didn't say it was their plan from the start (though in the case of Redis it definitely was and the company has nothing to do with the original author) and it doesn't matter. You seem to care too much about the price tag.

If you did read the license as you recommend, you'd know "walking things back" is not something they would be able to do without a separate copyright-transferring CLA.

I have values. And those values include believing you don't get to dictate what other people do with their time and labor. Appreciating what they release to the world without requiring compensation. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

You are confusing freeware with open source. What you describe is not values, it's being happy with whatever happens as long as you don't have to pay for it. People like you are the reason the general public is needy and acts entitled towards open source - it's all about the transaction instead of a community around the project.

Thankfully the people behind Bitwarden have actual values and doubled down on a proper FOSS license.