Bitwarden's Next Release Puts Commercially Licensed Builds in App Stores, With GPLv3 Source Staying on GitHub

Bitwarden told its community forum on October 9 that, starting with its next release, the apps it publishes to app stores will be commercially licensed builds, while the GPLv3 source stays on GitHub.

The notice, titled "Published version update in app stores," was posted by a staff member using the name RyanL. "Starting in the next release, the Bitwarden apps published to the various stores will be the commercially licensed builds," it says. It gives no version number, no list of affected apps and no date.

What Bitwarden said it is changing

RyanL wrote that the open-source code continues: "Bitwarden continues development of open source code under GPLv3." The post's edit says Bitwarden is "not going closed-source" and that forking is still allowed.

Self-hosting is the first thing users asked about. RyanL replied that there is "no change to self-hosting" and that the change "affects those who are repackaging and reselling Bitwarden." Another account, dwbit, answered a user who assumed otherwise: "That is incorrect, there is no change to the ability to self-host with a Bitwarden subscription."

Two lines in the thread matter more than the reassurance:

• "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."

RyanL gave one reason: that the model "provides additional legal protection for select features."

What the repository says today

The clients repository shows 13,900 stars and lists three licence files: LICENSE.txt, LICENSE_GPL.txt and LICENSE_BITWARDEN.txt. Its LICENSE.txt says code is covered by one of two licences, GPL v3.0 and the Bitwarden License v1.0. "The default license throughout the repository is GPL v3.0 unless the header specifies another license," it says, and "Bitwarden Licensed code is found only in the /bitwarden_license directory."

Code	Licence	Source
Most of the clients repository	GPL v3.0	LICENSE.txt in bitwarden/clients
/bitwarden_license directory	Bitwarden License v1.0	LICENSE.txt in bitwarden/clients
Store-published apps from the next release	Commercial licence	Forum notice, October 9

The README text captured on October 10 carries no notice about commercial store builds.

The 2024 promise this is measured against

In October 2024, community concerns about Bitwarden's SDK licence prompted a response. AlternativeTo reported on October 28, 2024 that Kyle Spearrin, Bitwarden's chief technology officer, reorganised the SDK so users could build and run the app with only GPL and OSI-approved code. AlternativeTo's paraphrase of Spearrin's GitHub comment says that if future references included Bitwarden License code, "a method for producing multiple build variants will be provided, akin to the web vault client builds."

That promise concerned what users could build from source. The October 9 notice concerns what Bitwarden ships to stores. The two are compatible, and the notice does not say whether the GPL-only build Spearrin described will keep tracking the commercial one.

Who is affected, and what the notice leaves open

Bitwarden has offered an F-Droid build through its own private F-Droid repository since a June 14, 2019 post. The October 9 notice does not say whether that build becomes a commercial one.

Forum users raised other gaps, and staff left some unanswered. One asked whether the Windows Portable Desktop App download would be commercial or open source; RyanL said the download page will link to the commercial build. Another asked whether a tier beyond Free and Premium is coming. The thread has no answer on that.

One user compared the change to the MinIO and Coinkite cases, and some said they would cancel subscriptions or watch the project more closely. Those are users' statements, not Bitwarden's.

Other open-source vendors have drawn similar lines. Unison Cloud went MIT while its local-run guide still pulls Nimbus from a private repository, and Supabase bought Turso without stating a price. Bitwarden's next release has no announced date, and that release is when the commercial licence first reaches the stores.