Ok. Just ignore his comments. See if that works.
Yes, letâs hope the team gets the point someday.
1Password should no longer be recommendable, and those who read this entire thread will be smart enough to understand it. Data as sensitive as passwords should not be managed in a proprietary way, whether there are regular audits or not.
Being open-source isnât magic, but it does add that additionnal and minimal layer of security and trust you absolutely need to have fewer doubts when adding highly confidential data to the software.
1Password doesnât have this minimal security layer, whether you like it or not. Itâs factual, not an opinion.
4 Likes
If there werenât already a good number of reliable and secure password managers (KeePassXC/DX, BitwardenâŚ), it would be understandable to recommend 1Password (because in that case, it would be the least worst of all).
But this is not the case.
4 Likes
We get your point, we just currently disagree. 
1 Like
Then the open source requirement should be removed from all the other categories.
PG either only cares about privacy and the minimal amount of security to enforce privacy. In which case the open source requirement should just be removed from all the categories.
Or PG also cares about freedom, digital rights, etc., in which case open source should be required everywhere where it makes sense and isnât harming the security, privacy, or the available options to zero or just one.
The reason why criteria exist is to make the recommendations as objective as possible and somewhat protect against bias, conflict of interest, etc. But the way it is right now is this: yeah, we like 1Password, so no open source criteria for password managers, but we donât like Obsidian enough, so notebooks are required to be open source. Even though Obsidian is quite a lot better than the alternatives than 1Password is against its alternatives, and Obsidian manages a lot less sensitive data. Do I think this is objective? Not at all.
5 Likes
Bit of a black and white take. I donât think everything needs to be binary, and the recommendations certainly arenât binary. I think it should boil down to âare there FOSS solutions that offer a seriously good enough UX experience or a legit variable alternativeâ.
If PG is strict FOSS, there are not e-mail vendors to be recommended. We must all resort to using PGP handwritten or printed letters to one another haha.
FOSS isnât a hard requirement if E2EE is supported. If it isnât supported, then FOSS is more heavily looked at.
6 Likes
Time to raise standards and require FOSS for password managers?
no.
That does not meet the criteria @jonah put out for a change to occur.
2 Likes
While this is a great addition to Proton Pass, it is unfortunately pretty half-baked at this time, so just because Proton has implemented it doesnât mean that the implementation is as good as with 1Password. Yet, I still support making this category open source. Here are some feedback that people have had on this feature:
Personally, I would not really be opposed to making this change at this point, but this is not really a decisive discussion, so I donât want to mark this as approved. Yes there are quite a lot of votes on this issue, but for every person in favor of making this change, Iâve seen another person against it. And I think both sides have merit here.
When topics are so split like this the best path forward is usually to maintain the status quo, which means still not changing this criteria for now.
Iâm mainly saying this to make sure nobody is against this change solely because I was, and to encourage the rest of the @team to speak up if they are getting a different feeling about the community consensus on this than I am.
1 Like
While FOSS is good for security and privacy, that would also mean removing 1Password from PG. which I am against. Just because they are not FOSS, doesnât mean they are insecure. If people want FOSS, then letâs ask for backends to be open source too, that will eliminate Proton and many others.
Call me a fan but no other password manager can replace 1Password at the moment, and considering the development rate, listening to customer feedback and taking action for them, I donât think neither Bitwarden, nor Proton Pass can catch 1Password in the foreseeable future.
I mentioned many times before, I am not a programmer, so being open source has no meaning to me, but I understand there are people who can inspect the code, but unless you can compile both frontend and backend, just checking the code and creating bug reports, issues or feedback on Github wonât do much, right? It all depends on developer, to process these Github requests or not. I am trusting audit reports, and the actions taken to those reports. 1Password has the most audits so far, and they have bug bounties in addition to that.
4 Likes
I just donât like creating unnecessary restrictions that reduce choice without providing a clear benefit. At this moment, the criteria change would create an event where privacy guides would be removing a good privacy tool for a non privacy ideological reason. Which just seems out of scope.
I donât see any reason for @jonah to waffle on what would cause the criteria to change, when no significant developments have happened.
2 Likes
I just want to stress that ultimately you all are responsible for making this change, thereâs nobody at the team holding this back behind the scenes, outside of their personal opinions which really have the same weight as anyone else.
This thread comes up a lot like ârequiring open source for password managers has so many votes, itâs ridiculous that Privacy Guides hasnât made this obvious change yet!â
Open source, and freedom in general, are certainly factors when it comes to privacy, so this is wrong. However, it is just one factor of many, and clearly many people here donât believe it should be the most important one, which is again exactly why we havenât pushed this change through
2 Likes
While I agree those factors are important in general, it seems a bit disingenuous to say that in this context when there is a clear example of a non FOSS option being perfectly valid. It also seems to devalue user choice and tool effectiveness.
1 Like
It should be, or at least one of the most important factors.
If I had my way, no cloud password managers would be recommended, or the local password managers would be prioritized over cloud solutions. I donât trust the cloud in general, and I donât think itâs a good idea to store all of your passwords in the cloud even encrypted, because youâre essentially trusting someone else with your passwords. Of course everyoneâs passwords are stored on the internet on the sites they have accounts on, but we donât need to create another point of attack.
But with closed source cloud based managers like 1Password, you never really know whatâs going on. Everyone knows closed source code is much harder to audit than open source, less transparent, reduced trust in the developer. For something as sensitive as passwords, closed source services shouldnât be trusted.
2 Likes
Open source is about more than auditing code and anyone can benefit from other developerâs ability to read, audit, and modify the source. Without open source we wouldnât have good forks of bad software like LibreWolf (Firefox) and Tenacity (Audacity). It ensures software can outlive itâs original authors and prevents vendor lock-in. You donât have to be a programmer to support open source.
But what is the point of forking if you canât access backend or even change the actual frontend code? I am talking about current recommended password managers.
It is not about supporting it. I am not against open-source software, donât get me wrong. I am only against the people who are doing witch hunt against closed-source apps just because it is not open-source.
Some people are treating 1Password like it is their lifelong nemesis. I just couldnât understand that.
Threat models, threat models, threat models⌠i was using the same password variations across all sites before a password manager, significantly increasing my risk of attack in my opinion.
Lastly, the value proposition of password managers is intense security. Password managers not encrypting their data reduces their value a lot. It makes (reputable) password managers one of the easiest closed source applications to trust for this reason, ironically. Failing to be secure means people will abandon the platform, or significantly deter new users from joining.
Wireshark and monitoring IO calls from 1pass will let you know pretty quickly if itâs sending plaintext.
1 Like
It does seem like ever since @fria resurrected the Remove 1Password - #39 by fria thread the kabal of anti-1password users has become the majority of support for this criteria change. Which is fine, there is no requirement to support in good faith, just odd.
I would be happy with a middle ground: new password managers to be recommended must be FOSS. Existing ones will stay until a vulnerability kicks them out.
1 Like