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Open Coworking Stack

OpenBao coworking evaluation stub

This is an incomplete evaluation stub, not an implementation guide.

Verified snapshot

OpenBao is an emerging community-driven secrets-management project under OSI-approved MPL-2.0. The catalog positions it as a Vault-lineage option for teams avoiding BSL, while warning that expertise and maturity are central concerns. It holds secrets, audit logs, and personal data.

Sources reviewed 2026-07-17: homepage, repository, and documentation.

Evaluation questions

  • Is a secrets server justified beyond an established staff password manager?
  • Is current project maturity acceptable for the chosen staging use?
  • Who owns initialization/unseal, policies, audit logs, HA, upgrades, and recovery?
  • Can secrets and policies migrate without exposing them?

Smallest experiment

Evaluate only in a lab until the team can operate unseal and recovery. Store synthetic staging secrets, test least-privilege access, revoke a client, and complete a clean restore.

Risks

  • Expert operational burden and emerging maturity
  • Central secret outage, exposure, or unrecoverable keys
  • Migration, HA, and support remain unverified

TODO before a full guide

  • Threat-model initialization, keys, policies, audit, storage, and clients
  • Verify current backup/restore and upgrade docs
  • Test outage, revocation, recovery, and secure export/migration
  • Define password-manager boundary and break-glass ownership