The Quiet Renovation at Bitwarden

Bitwarden has undergone a series of quiet but significant changes: longtime CEO Michael Crandell was replaced by Michael Sullivan, whose career centers on private equity M&A and company exits. The CFO also departed. The company's website removed the 'Always free' promise from its personal plan page, and its core values were rewritten — dropping Inclusion and Transparency in favor of Innovation and Trust — with no official announcement. A 2022 blog post was silently edited to reflect the new values but left internally contradictory. The author argues this follows a familiar pattern of trust-building followed by quiet renegotiation of terms, and warns Vaultwarden self-hosters that API compatibility is not guaranteed under new management. The post recommends self-hosting as a hedge and explains the open-source licensing safety net that would enable a community fork if needed.