Bitwarden should manage its Flathub application

Feature Requests Password Manager
81

I am also in favor of providing a verified Flatpak. The Snap Store is very controversial and Flatpak is the future in my opinion.
I hope there are more people who support this approach.

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82

Any update on this? I am still using the AppImage. I would much rather be using the Flatpak version.

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83

Hello, I wrote an e-mail directly to customer support on the subject and received the following reply:

E-mail excerpt

I have contacted customer service with the following message:

As an open source tool and provider of security software, I would like to see a verified flatpack version offered. The Linux community is growing and not everyone relies on Ubuntu from Canonical. Only unverified versions (using the original logo) or forks are circulating on Flathub. The Snapstore is considered very controversial by the OpenSource community and cannot be the first choice. So I ask you to support a verified flatpak version. With kind regards… .

Answer:

Hello xvs03,

I understand what you mean, and if this is important to you, you should consider joining our community and submitting this as a suggestion directly on our feature request page for other members to vote on. If your idea resonates with the Bitwarden community, we may consider it in the future.

Our Feature Request Site find you here: Feature Requests - Bitwarden Community Forums And you can find our roadmap here: https://community.bitwarden.com/t/bitwarden-roadmap/12865

Sorry, that’s all I can do as an individual.

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84

According to https://flathub.org/about (emphasis mine):

Some apps have a checkmark on the app page under the developer name. This means the app is published on Flathub by its original developer or a third party approved by the developer.

That page also has instructions on how to start the verification process for your app, although it doesn’t describe the criteria that have to be met.

So, I wonder if the current maintainer(s) of https://flathub.org/apps/com.bitwarden.desktop could attempt to verify their app and see what the process involves, e.g. getting some sort of official approval from the Bitwarden team.

Unfortunately, it looks like https://flathub.org/apps/com.bitwarden.desktop is not building their app from source, but is instead downloading the .deb release from GitHub and extracting the files (see the build spec). There’s a PR for building from source that’s been open since 2021, so not sure if it will get merged any time soon. It seems like it would be important for any verified Flathub app to build from source.

But, I still wonder if either the current Flathub project or a new project could obtain official verification and then continue to be maintained by volunteers or eventually transfer ownership to the Bitwarden team.

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85

Bitwarden should have an official verified Flatpak sooner than later. Flatpak is the most widely supported method for distributing apps on Linux. Bitwarden’s omission of an official Flatpak does a disservice to its Linux user base.

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86

@mellowfrogs

So, I wonder if the current maintainer(s) could attempt to verify their app and see what the process involves, e.g. getting some sort of official approval from the Bitwarden team.

Current maintainer here, someone opened an issue about it in the past but upstream did not show interest.

It seems like it would be important for any verified Flathub app to build from source.

Now that Bitwarden cannot be built from source without a proprietary licensed component, I am seriously thinking about dropping my yearly subscription and the maintenance of the Flatpak package.

@fun

Bitwarden’s omission of an official Flatpak does a disservice to its Linux user base.

I don’t think they care much, for Linux or FOSS. They likely think that they will get more money by going proprietary and focusing on their enterprise user base, as many others did in the past (Redis, ElasticSearch, etc.).

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87

And the silent locking of the corresponding thread upstream is not a good sign.

I wished Bitwarden were to communicate clearly their intent at turning proprietary, whether in part or in full, instead of letting its community figure it out by itself.

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88

Hey all; getting the FlatHub Flatpak into official maintenance is now actively being worked on. There are some steps missing until we arrive at full maintenance including

and so on. I, along with a member of the build release engineering team are now co-maintainers next to @ghisvail.

I don’t know the plans for the SDK’s build options specifically, but the current intended plan is to build against the dual-licensed sdk-internal, disabling the source-available-only code at build time if possible, so it only builds open source code. It is not intended to make the clients only work by including proprietary code.

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89

Thank you for the work you are doing to support Linux Desktop! It is much appreciated.

90

Thank you! I am excited for this new development and look forward to switching to the Flatpak.

91

Flathub now shows the flatpak is verified!

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