
“I’ve mostly been the face of the company, but I’m not the only behind operations,” Spearrin insists. They see Spearrin author the vast majority of Bitwarden code changes on GitHub and wonder what would happen to Bitwarden if the chief technology officer were to go under the proverbial bus? While the company has continued to grow, there are repeated fears among Bitwarden’s loyal community of users on Reddit that Bitwarden is something of a one-man band. Spearrin started Bitwarden only four years ago. I don’t see them retreating and trying to lock us out.” One-man band? “Even though it’s not in their direct interest to help us out, it’s in their interests to satisfy consumers. We’ve seen the browser vendors and operating system vendors responding to that and opening it up even more.” “They don’t want to just use Chrome’s password manager or Safari Keychain. “I think that’s come from demand from their user base,” Spearrin claims. If anything, Spearrin claims, the vendors have made it easier for third-party password managers over the past few years - both Google and Apple have allowed password managers to autofill on their mobile operating systems, for example. Is Spearrin worried that the browser makers will eventually act in their own self-interest and make it harder for third-party password managers to exist by, say, blocking their browser extensions? “It’s not really something that keeps me up at night,” he claims. Bitwarden operates by providing browser extensions for all of the different browsers, allowing it to sync, save and autofill your passwords.
