Then I heard about BitWarden. They offered a commercial service (with a free tier) that I could quickly try... they supported all the OSs, mobile and desktop, and browsers that I use... and they release their entire codebase (server and clients) under open source licenses. I tried it, it worked for me, I was sold!

Then I decided I wanted to run my own BitWarden server, rather than use their commercial centralised cloud platform (because, as with LastPass, it's a tempting target). That's when I found out the server of BitWarden was written using Microsoft technologies, C# (yeah, it's mostly open source, but it's dirty to me due to its Microsoft legacy), and MS SQL Server, which is a nasty proprietary dependency (especially given how basic the database requirements for this sort of application are).

So I was devastated that I couldn't set up my own server... until another Free and Open Source Software aficionado pointed me at Daniel Garcia's work! Daniel has implemented a full (unofficial) BitWarden work-alike using a fully FOSS stack: the Rust language, storing data in SQLite, and (quite thoughtfully) re-using other open source licensed components of the BitWarden system that don't have proprietary dependencies, including the website code and layout (which is part of the server).

Daniel's server implementation also unlocks all the "premium" services that BitWarden offers through their hosted service, too... so that's a nice bonus.

Another open source developer, mpasil, has created a "fork" of Daniel's project from which he maintains an up-to-date Docker container on hub.docker.com. Thanks to both Daniel Garcia and mpasil's efforts, it turns out to be quite straightforward to set up your own Docker-based BitWarden-compatible service! Here's how...