Hi,
I just noticed today that the Tags and Password Import and Export is now tagged as paid Pro features while it wasn’t before. Is there any information anywhere regarding this? What happened with the whole always free and “open source password manager” statement? Any more surprises in the roadmap? Will the mobile integration also be Pro now? Or auto completition? Or any other useful feature?
I mean, I’m aware that software development takes time and needs money. I’m also a developer. But what worries me is the sudden changes from free and open source to a surprise paid version.
Apart from that, I was planning to contribute after finishing my thesis, as I found this project pretty interesting and useful. But what about those contributions? Will they be also sold now as paid versions?
It would be really nice to hear from the Devs about this topic and why the sudden change. From what I understood from the beginning was that the only paid solution would be the cloud hosting and that’s all. The page even states sponsors and donations. So is it a money problem, or why the sudden unannounced change? Or did I miss out something?
Thank you for your questions, I understand your frustration but I hope you will take the time to understand where we come from.
What happened with the whole always free and “open source password manager” statement?
The community edition is still open source and free (as in free beer). The passbolt pro edition is open source (free as in libre), but it is not gratis. We are very careful about respecting the license here.
Will the mobile integration also be Pro now? Or auto completition? Or any other useful feature?
As more features becomes available in the pro version some features will be made available in the community edition. As a matter of fact any new features will first be available in the pro version to reward the pro subscribers.
But what about those contributions? Will they be also sold now as paid versions?
For contributors we will soon announce a program where companies or individuals making substantial contributions will get a pro edition subscription for free. You can decide how you want to distribute your contributions weather we merge it in the community and/or pro edition is up to discussion with the contributors. For example contributors may choose to develop plugins and make them available for a fee (like certain wordpress themes or plugins).
So is it a money problem, or why the sudden unannounced change? Or did I miss out something?
Making a software like passbolt is expensive. If we want the project to be successful we cannot rely on community edition gifts and sponsors. This is not a sudden change, the self-hosted pro version have been on our pricing page for almost a year now.
Your business model and strategy may be flawed: It is perfectly possible to generate revenue based on support subscriptions and hosted services to fund development. One does not necessarily need a distinction between CE and Pro version to reach your goals. Without this distinction you’d also get much more exposure in this space. Anyways, I agree with @rkk that this change in philosophy is unpleasant and a missed opportunity.
Is it possible to have free and pro users on the same server? Like is Pro a per User setting or a per Server setting.
Our company has a few power users. But most are not. But need access to Passwords occasionally when power users are on vacation/sick.
Stuff like autofill, changing master password timeout, tags will be critical to powerusers. But not for the rest.
Import/Export would be neat for us admins.
I really like passbolt. But here is simply no way I get 1200$ a year past my boss or finance. 240$ I might.
@stereo.xa with version 3 release recently we just shared the “dark theme” with the Community Edition, as well as making encrypted description available in the CE directly without making it a pro exclusive first. Folder will be available at some point in the Community Edition, as soon as we have new major exclusive functionalities available in the Pro version.
We will continue actively bringing new features to the Community Edition, I’m sure you can understand we are trying our best to strike the right balance between free and paid offers.
@remy Thank you for your reply. However I’d expect core functionality to be more important than dark mode. Creating folders or tags is a must have for a full-fledged password manager and you are losing users because of lack of these parts. I myself was considering using your system for our customers (NGOs and frequent OS donators btw) but have to look further (Nextcloud passwords/Keeweb or something alike) not because we don’t want to pay for software but because your business model seems wrong to me. Still thank you for your work
Is it true ? I will immediately move from passbolt if I can’t retrieve my passwords in a portable format. But as of today it seems that the export from the CE edition is still possible.
@farfade this is an old thread. Initially the export feature was pro exclusive (temporarily). It’s an example of feature we brought down to the CE. It’s not going anywhere.
I did not see the initial post was of 2018
I definitely trust your model of pro features as I know you’ll always make sure that the essential features (security, data retrieval…) will remain in CE !