Hello, I saw the new announcement about Lockbox, but it is only available to IOS for starters? Whatever happened to Mozilla prioritizing open source development? I was expecting something like this to be release to the F-Droid marketplace, or at least Google Play Store, since Android has a much better track record for supporting open source. Additionally, there is already OpenKeychain and Password Store. It seems like Mozilla could get a lot more accomplished if they decided to support other free open source solutions that work well, rather than reinventing the wheel for a proprietary platform.
That’s a great question. The Android app is next.
Our focus is to support Firefox users in retrieving and using their passwords across multiple platforms.
By starting with an iOS app we have an unique opportunity to learn and develop new functionality with a limited release audience. We can leverage those learnings to provide a more robust Android app experience out the gate, as well as better iOS app experience over time.
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Building for platforms like iOS and “open source development” are not entirely incompatible.
The entire Lockbox iOS application and development process has been and will continue to be Open Source and we look forward to any and all contributions: https://github.com/mozilla-lockbox/lockbox-ios
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You could have had a limited release audience for either. Additionally, Qt or other frameworks would have allowed you to develop for both platforms natively at the same time. I personally don’t see Lockbox lasting that long. Most people already have their favorite password manager. If password management was improved in Firefox, then people would have used that. Since this is another external app, people will continue to use Pass, KeePass, 1Password, LastPass, etc. Mozilla has already built a bad reputation as of recently, and I don’t see their decisions indicating that they are doing anything to fix it.
Some people do have a password manager and are happy with their experience - that’s wonderful. The Lockbox app serves a different audience; those users who have saved passwords in the browser and want to be able to more easily use them outside of the browser. The Lockbox team will continue to seek out problems people have keeping track of their passwords on multiple platforms, and work to solve these issues. The iOS app is the first step in this direction.
Hmm, I actually have a password manager and am quite happy with it (1Password) though it is not open source.
Why do I still even consider Lockbox:
A really good, hassle free, open source solution does imho not yet exist. Pass, keepass, etc. are not good enough from a handling point of view (for me) and especially the mobile apps integration leaves to desire.
Lockbox would have to catch up with a lot of functionality to be even considered a valid alternative but I like the thought of having an open source password manager a lot. Good Luck, I hope this undertaking will be successful!
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It’s january 2019, any news about android app? Or you’ll just close this app like bunch of other Test Pilot apps?
Hi ito! Right before the new year we reached our “Alpha” engineering milestone to begin internal testing, security testing and reviews, etc. We hope to finish up our final feature development, bug fixes, and get this ready for release within a couple of months. 
Please feel free to follow along with us on GitHub:
Its released now.
Check out the blog post [1]
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/03/26/firefox-lockbox-now-on-android-keeping-your-passwords-safe/
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