Breaking Up with 1Password after 15 Years
I wasn't expecting to change my password manager today, but after receiving a lackluster response from 1Password in response to an email I sent them about their decision to get in bed with Omarchy, a Linux "distribution" (scare quotes because as I understand it, it is essentially just a vibecoded set of dotfiles and pre-defined packages for an Arch/Hyprland setup) founded and controlled by DHH, of Ruby on Rails fame and more recently in the news for expressing a variety of extremely right-wing takes, I canceled my subscription.
This choice of "distro" for them to contribute $300k to struck me as a poor decision on the technical merits, a poor choice for company optics, and potentially a bellwether for an erosion of their corporate ethics (or perhaps an unveiling of an already existing lack thereof), all of which made me doubt their direction and leadership in a way that I have not in the past. I sent them an email about it, and got back what was likely a canned non-response full of corporate doublespeak, which did exactly nothing to allay my concerns.
I really liked 1Password, and have been a paying subscriber since at least 2012! Nonetheless, given how uncomfortable I am with my money going to support a project like Omarchy and the pall this whole thing cast over my previously rosy view of 1Password, I decided to nope out. Reproduced in full below is the email I sent to them after my cancellation.
Hello,
I emailed yesterday about 1Password's support of Omarchy and by proxy DHH, and I wanted to follow up to confirm that, after 15 years, I have indeed cancelled my 1Password family subscription and moved to another service. That's 15 years of recommending 1Password to all of my friends and family, getting it instituted at several startups, and making it a cornerstone of my own security posture, unfortunately gone.
Your response to my initial complaint was about as weak as it is possible for such a response to be, and I want to highlight some particular points. The following quotes are from Alex, Sr. Service Representative, or whoever wrote the canned response that is being sent to everyone complaining about this:
We chose to support Omarchy because it is a growing Linux environment that developers use and value, and because 1Password already had a meaningful presence in that community.
There are many, many projects that would satisfy these goals without the poor optics and political baggage. Indeed, as a long time Linux user, I would argue that Omarchy is not even a distribution as such: it's just a vibecoded Arch Linux skew. Arch Linux itself, or any number of other spins on it, would have been a much better target for 1Password's charity. Furthermore, I can't understand 1Password choosing to throw so much money behind what is essentially a venture-capital-style gamble. It is likely that Omarchy is a flash in the pan, ascendant in the Silicon-Valley-oligarch-driven hype cycle du jour, and will be gone in three years. Why not instead donate that money to one of the many chronically underfunded but stable components of the Linux ecosystem?
We recognize that Omarchy is closely associated with its founder, and that raises questions about what our support means. Our contribution is made to the Omacom Foundation, not to an individual, and is not an endorsement of any individual's personal or political views. 1Password does not endorse hateful, dehumanizing, or exclusionary views.
Whether to the foundation or to the individual driving the project is irrelevant, given that the project has been explicitly touted as a vehicle for the views of its founder. Consider the following direct quote from DHH:
Omarchy is not just a distribution, but it's also a counterweight to all the nonsense that has plagued Linux for far too long. It's a refuge from the clowns and the circus that has been Linux politics since the old institutions got infiltrated. QUACK THAT! 😂
Literally the only thing that distinguishes Omarchy as a "distribution" is its explicitly political mission (and I guess its lack of security controls, and the fact that it is mostly vibecoded, so nothing complimentary). Clearly, this is a political project with a political agenda, and the "nonsense" he is referring to here is, for example, being called out on statements like the following:
When wolves get out of control, you shoot them. When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them. This isn't hard, it isn't cruel. It's the basic logic of self-preservation.
So, explicit dehumanization of "gypsies" and analogizing mass deportation to animal culling in order to preserve his preferred ethnostate. What was that about 1Password "not endors[ing] hateful, dehumanizing, or exclusionary views" again?
The technical argument also fails to hold water given the statements like the following from at least one of 1Password's on VPs of Product:
DHH’s past year… a masterclass for all the folks out there who wonder what type of force of will is needed to change things.
Note how he’s actually engaging with people who are taking shots at him and Aikdoing their energy into both learning something new and improving Omarchy.
Clearly, there is support for DHH the person at 1Password, not just Omarchy the collection of dotfiles and bash scripts.
The decision to lie down with this particular set of bedfellows is such a remarkably bad business decision by 1Password that it has really shaken my faith in the leadership there. Even if one is charitable and for a moment lends credence to the technical arguments, someone at 1Password should have been the adult in the room and pointed out the obvious reputational fallout that would occur as a result of this decision. I'm not asking for donations to all of my personal feel-good causes, but I am asking that donations be to sufficiently apolitical causes that it is not so easy to make the case that 1Password is actively supporting the dissolution of common decency in our industry.
I cannot even begin to express to you how tired I am of seeing this kind of alt-right garbage take over technology, political discourse, and such large swaths of American culture. I am beyond not okay with my money going to support more of it. I can't change everything, but I can certainly change which password manager I use.
Sincerely,
Matthew Planchard
If you're curious, I was already a Proton subscriber, so I switched to Proton Pass, which has seemed pretty good so far. The setup was easy: I directly uploaded an export from 1Password, and everything looks like it came over okay. We'll see if it sticks for the next 15 years.