Dashlane makes its password manager open-source

In something of a surprising move, Dashlane has made the source code for its password manager publicly available on GitHub.

Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 license, the open-sourcing applies to Dashlane's iOS and Android apps. The company says that is made the decision in the name of transparency and trust, and that the projects will be update four times a year -- although this may increase further down the line.

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Dashlane says the benefits of publishing the code for its mobile apps are that anyone can audit it. The company points out that anyone who is interested will also be able to explore the algorithms and logic behind password management software in general.

Although Dashlane says that it is "not yet in a position to accept contributions", feedback on the code is welcome.

The company says:

In the future we aspire to make it so external contributors can suggest improvements directly in GitHub. But this also requires another level of internal organization.

We took the first step of making the source code available knowing that this is just the start of the journey, and we're excited to share more as soon as we can. However, you won't be able to build your very own Dashlane with this code -- we're sharing the recipe, but we had to leave out a few of the ingredients that make it our own.

Explaining the thinking behind going public with its app code, Dashlane says:

Transparency and trust are part of our company values, and we strive to reflect those values in everything we do. We hope that being transparent about our code base will increase the trust customers have in our product.

We also believe in a more open digital world in which developers can easily participate and connect with each other. This is our contribution to this ambition and another step in that direction.

There's also an internal side benefit to sharing our code base publicly: it forces our engineering team to level up on the quality of the code, to make it cleaner, and to ensure it’s readable. We would not want to share code we cannot be proud of, even though all code includes some level of tech debt and legacy content.

You can find the code for Android and iOS on the Dashlane GitHub account.

Image credit: nialowwa / depositphotos