Why is attachment an premium feature for self hosting?

So I’m new to self hosting BW and I was wondering why attachments is an premium feature.
I’ve a lot of attachments in my 1Password vaults and these can’t be imported in BW (free).

I understand that people have to pay for ‘renting’ space, but at home server it is not necessary to rent space.

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The feature remains premium but on self-hosted instances you don’t have the 1GB limit. So in a way you don’t pay for real-estate but for the feature itself.

And to extend the question, why is the storage space of the self-hosted premium version limited to 1 GB?

Sorry for hijacking the topic.

There is no limit…

Still doesn’t make sense to me why one has to pay for uploading to ones own server

@kspearrin What about this ?

@Bob, you don’t pay for uploading files to your server which you could do on your own with SSH or FTP, you pay for the convenience of being able to easily:

  • Encrypt/decrypt your files
  • Access your encrypted files on many platforms

Same is true for TOTP codes : why would you pay for a feature (generating TOTP codes) that many other apps provide? Well, because they’re synced between your devices, because you can autofill them with your password, because it doesn’t make another app to manage, install and maintain, … You pay for the convenience, which to me is the added value here.

I understand that it is an added value, but then I would like to argue for two revenue models. If someone wants to host themselves on their own server, they have to pay a one-time fee for the software. With all features onlocked. And people who do not host themselves take a subscription.

The software is frequently updated by 8-bit solutions so I think it’s fair to charge $10/year for the continued development of the software, even in the case of self hosted instances.

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I disagree with that and I think it should be free for self-hosted instances to use all features included with the software. It is not fair to charge for open source software that is being self-hosted

@Bobby Welcome to the forum!

Since Bitwarden is open-source (as you have noted), you could just port the code, and then modify and compile your own version of the server and client software in which all features have been unlocked (and you can even add new features for a completely customized solution).

Still a bad idea to require licenses for an open source product to use all of the implemented features