Sandboxie is a utility that allows you to run Windows applications in a “sandbox” that’s isolated from the rest of the operating system to prevent malware, spyware, or adware from infecting or just slowing down your system.
The software has been around since 2004, and it’s been owned by cybersecurity company Sophos since 2017.
Last year, Sophos announced it was making Sandboxie available as freeware and that the company was planning to transition it to an open source project. Now Sophos has taken the next step by releasing the Sandboxie source code.
If you just want to use Sandboxie and don’t care about the source code, Sophos says you can download the latest pre-compiled version for Windows 7, Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 from the company’s download page.
But Sophos also notes that this is the last version it plans to release. From here on out, the company is hoping Sandboxie becomes a community-supported project.
When the company announced plans to transition to open source last year, Sophos made it clear that Sandboxie had “never been a significant component of Sophos’ business,” but that rather than simply kill the project altogether, the company decided that making it available as an open source project would allow it to live on without further investment from Sophos.
Sophos will close its Sandboxie forum and the Sandboxie license server on June 1st, 2020 (the license server isn’t necessary since the latest versions of the app don’t require it anyway).
If community members step up and take over maintenance and development of the project, Sophos also plans to “gradually wind down the [Sandboxie] website and… close the website during the fall of 2020.”
“… its future is uncertain”
If it’s of any use, the community sure picks up its development.
My question though is, should I prefer a light virtualization solution like Shadow Defender plus PortableApps, or a sandbox like Sandboxie? I’m leaning toward the light virtualization/Shadow Defender plus PrtableApps option. An open source/free version of Shadow Defender would be nice, though.