Sandbox program Sandboxie is now freeware (soon open source)

[Karlston]

Sandbox program Sandboxie is now freeware (soon open source)

Sandboxie, a sandbox program for Microsoft's Windows operating system, has been turned into a free application. The latest version, Sandboxie 5.31.4 was released on September 10, 2019; it is the first version of Sandboxie that is available as freeware.

 

Sandboxie started out as a shareware program for Windows to run applications and files in a sandbox on the running system. Created by developer Ronen Tzur, it was picked up by Invincea before Invincea itself was acquired by security company Sophos.

 

Sophos did not change the Sandboxie license initially when it acquired the assets. Sophos announced the license change on the official Sophos Community blog today. The company revealed plans to make Sandboxie an open source tool eventually.

 

The new Sandboxie version that Sophos released today does not require an activation code and does not restrict access to features that were available to paid customers only previously. In other words: all features of the premium version of Sandboxie are available for free as of today.

 

The paid version of Sandboxie supported several features that the free version did not support. Most notable the ability to force programs to run in the sandbox and the ability to create and use multiple sandboxes on the system, and even to run the same program in multiple sandboxes.

 

 

Sandboxie cannot be downloaded directly from the official website; Sophos added a form to the download process that users need to fill out before the download is unlocked. The company promises that the information won't be used for marketing purposes.

 

What about paying customers?

 

Sandboxie has been turned into freeware and it will become an open source program in the future. Sophos plans to hand over the program to the community. It is unclear if the community will be 100% responsible for the development or if Sophos engineers will work on Sandboxie as well.

 

Customers who purchased Sandboxie in the past are asked to update to the new version as well. The license terms don't change according to this FAQ for paid license holders but customer support will become community based.

Closing Words

Sandboxie is a handy software for Windows to quickly run programs or files in a sandbox for security purposes. While you can achieve the same using virtual machines, one of Sandboxie's appeals was that it used the underlying system for its sandbox which meant no installation of operating systems or slow startups.

 

Sophos would certainly have felt the wrath of the Sandboxie community if it would have stopped development. The release as freeware and later on as a community maintained open source project is a good PR move but also the best option for existing Sandboxie users and the future of the application. Who knows, maybe we will see Sandboxie creator Ronen return as a developer to the project.

 

 

 

Source: Sandbox program Sandboxie is now freeware (soon open source) (gHacks - Martin Brinkmann)

[tivstip]

5 years later you find out was a virus 😂

[Arachnoid]

 

https://community.sophos.com/products/sandboxie/f/forum/115109/major-sandboxie-news-sandboxie-is-now-a-free-tool-with-plans-to-transition-it-to-an-open-source-tool

[steven36]

9 hours ago, Arachnoid said:

 

https://community.sophos.com/products/sandboxie/f/forum/115109/major-sandboxie-news-sandboxie-is-now-a-free-tool-with-plans-to-transition-it-to-an-open-source-tool

Lol the reason  it never made no money it's not something that was really needed  it never had no real competition on Windows ether and still they couldn't sell it .  look at VMware  it makes lots of money  and it's always had working keygens and  competition were Sandboxie  messed itself up is if they would put half the effort into making it a good program as they did to keep people from cracking it they maybe could of sold it.

 

But it always had a bad sigma  every since they made the x64 version it was never proven they fixed it were it fully worked on x64 bit . And if you bought a PC in last 12 years it most likely is 64 bit . Only reason i know about Sandboxie is because of warez forums and years ago it was easily keygened and then they sold the company and went nuts with there anti piracy protection  so it lost any fame it had .Most people who bought had used cracked versions in the past  Only noobs and parniod pirates used it. It was marketed on peoples fears.. i used  cracks for 18 years and never needed to use them inside of a sandbox because i was careful of were i got them from and used other security software instead.  Real testers  and businesses use vms and bare metal to test they can afford a test machine and the best software money can buy . 

 

They is malware and legit programs now days that want live in a sandbox or vm  it goes dormant so if you dont test with bare metal you can't test it . Just like sone Windows programs won't run in Wine on Linux and Windows programs . Windows malware and virus  can't  run at all in Linux without wine or a fork of it.

 

As far as if it gets open sourced or not  that's up to the company that owns it now,  all that means that source code will be available and if anything was wrong with it we will now know the truth about it and it will come out , it will be up to the windows community to maintain it  and if it dies out it will  be there fault  Windows 10 will most likley put it's death grip on it just like it has on all other consumer based software , People stop making Theme Patchers for windows because of Windows 10 updates breaking it while these type programs are nice and stable on Windows 7 and 8.1. Many Consumers stop buying antivirus in favor of free Windows defender  and many consumers stop buying Windows in favor of Smartphones and tablets .

 

Stuff that use Windows drivers is no value to Linux  they been maintaining there own open source sandbox software FireJail for years.

https://github.com/netblue30/firejail

 

[DKT27]

I have a feeling that it becoming open source will mean more people would contribute to it's development and might even be forked by better developers out there.

[debebee]

or just be abandonware like wfc