Why don't people use open source password managers?

[toobravetosave]

bitwarden is open source iirc and i use that when i need cross platform password management

it’s also p popular and well known and mentioning it would probably have made this entire post unnecessary since yes…people do use them…

 

[chrono1081]

Just because it's open source doesn't mean it's secure. There's this enormous myth that just because everyone *can* look at the code it means they do (or understand it, or spot vulnerabilities in it, or fix it). I'd be less trusting of something open source because there's no financial incentive to keep it secure and a bad actor could spot a vulnerability much easier and exploit it.

I think people are more likely to trust something that has a financial incentive to fix.

 

[MisterSavage]

Just because it's open source doesn't mean it's secure. There's this enormous myth that just because everyone *can* look at the code it means they do (or understand it, or spot vulnerabilities in it, or fix it). I'd be less trusting of something open source because there's no financial incentive to keep it secure and a bad actor could spot a vulnerability much easier and exploit it.

That's not true for every single open source project. There certainly is a financial incentive for Bitwarden to keep things secure. Enterprise customers and home customers would stop paying and switch to something else if it was found lacking.