In 2016, the White House mandated that each government agency had to open source at least 20 percent of its custom software within three years. "After thoughtful consideration we decided that the best way to keep Sandboxie going was to give it back to its users - transitioning it to an open source tool." The Pentagon doesn't meet White House mandate for more open source software "The Sandboxie user base represents some of the most passionate, forward thinking, and knowledgeable members of the security community and we didn’t want to let you down," Sophos' blog post read. In other words, the new free license will have access to all the features previously only available to paid customers.Ĭiting this tool's community impact, senior leaders at Sophos announced the release of Sandboxie version 5.31.4–an unrestricted version of the program–will remain free until the tool is fully open sourced. We have modified the code and have released an updated free version that does not restrict any features.
Sandboxie currently uses a license key to activate and grant access to premium features only available to paid customers (as opposed to those using a free version). This intermediate phase of free-but-not-open-source appears to be related to the current system design, which requires an activation key: But Sandboxie has earned a reputation for letting users run unknown software in a safe environment without risking their systems, so the team is putting in the additional work to release it as open source software. Sophos said that since Sandboxie isn't a core aspect of its business, the easier decision would've been to shut it down. Sophos Group plc, a British security company, released a free version of its popular Sandboxie tool, used as an isolated operating environment for Windows ( downloadable here). Sandboxie becomes freeware on its way to open source
In this edition of our open source news roundup, Sandboxie's path to open source, update on the Pentagon's adoption of open source, open source in Hollywood, and more! Running Kubernetes on your Raspberry Pi.A practical guide to home automation using open source tools.6 open source tools for staying organized.An introduction to programming with Bash.A guide to building a video game with Python.