Non-profit like Signal that sells cloud hosting to pay the bills, standard protocol with self-hosting option for the server like email/browsers agreed upon decades ago, anyone can create an interoperable desktop/browser/mobile client. Fully encrypted such that even the non-profit doesn't have the decryption keys.
That being said: it's unclear if anyone really understands how to build an open source product with cloud hosting covering the bills. Almost everyone either makes a deal with the devil (VC funding) or upsells too aggressively anyway.
Cloud storage and CPU usage is basically negligible per-user for a password manager. I imagine you could service hundreds of millions of users on just a couple of capable machines, similar to HN's setup. Even with hundreds of passwords, most users total mere MB's of usage -- it's even simpler than email!
I think this is one of the rare cases where corporate users can pay for big accounts with special sharing features and completely subsidize a free product for individual users. Or you could charge individual users $5 a year to cover cloud costs (more than enough), with self-hosting as an option for highly technical users to save a buck.
> sells cloud hosting to pay the bills, standard protocol with self-hosting option for the server like email/browsers agreed upon decades ago, anyone can create an interoperable desktop/browser/mobile client. Fully encrypted such that even the non-profit doesn't have the decryption keys
All of those are true of Bitwarden, except for the non-profit part...
> Or you could charge individual users $5 a year to cover cloud costs
And who pays for the development?? Bitwarden already charges only 10€/year, so they're basically doing exactly what you're proposing, but paying for development with VC money.
Even if servers were literally free (they're far from it!), do you have any idea how many users they'd need to cover just the minimal amount of developers, one business person and either an in-house or external security auditor? And who would pay for all of that during the time it took them to build up that user base??
I hate the VC culture as much as the next guy, but unless the founder is already crazy rich, you need external capital to start up any large decently company - or even a non-profit.
That being said: it's unclear if anyone really understands how to build an open source product with cloud hosting covering the bills. Almost everyone either makes a deal with the devil (VC funding) or upsells too aggressively anyway.
Cloud storage and CPU usage is basically negligible per-user for a password manager. I imagine you could service hundreds of millions of users on just a couple of capable machines, similar to HN's setup. Even with hundreds of passwords, most users total mere MB's of usage -- it's even simpler than email! I think this is one of the rare cases where corporate users can pay for big accounts with special sharing features and completely subsidize a free product for individual users. Or you could charge individual users $5 a year to cover cloud costs (more than enough), with self-hosting as an option for highly technical users to save a buck.