License expired - what now?

Here is what is missing from the responses from Sophos.

Nowhere have I heard them announce that the problem is just temporary, offer any reassurance to their customers or that they plan to continue normal operations and give any kind of time frame.  It looks to me that management is doing a terrible PR job on this no matter what the problem is.

Instead they just give what now seems to clearly be a false excuse to stall for time.

Sounds like either financial trouble and pending bankruptcy or some kind of legal liability problem.

The fact that they won't just tell you what is going on in a credible and transparent way is ominous.

Even if they somehow survive this, the Sophos brand is crippled by these actions.

It's too bad.  Sandboxie is an outstanding program.  Apparently the management isn't nearly as good as the developers (or as good as the customer support referring to the person in this thread who has the unfortunate job to be stuck in the middle of this mess between management and the customers).

Hopefully, if Sophos goes belly up, they will sell off Sandboxie to someplace that has better management.

This Sophos reticence smells like lawyers. "Don't say anything, don't admit anything, don't confirm anything, just tell them we are working on a response. Wear them down. Eventually they will go away."

They are just another junkware company that has run into trouble. Have you seen their stock price? It has dropped like a rock. They obviously have bigger problems to deal with. And their incompetence doesn't inspire much confidence.

Sophos has heavily damaged, if not totally destroyed the good will Sandboxie had with thousands of users.  I doubt they could find a buyer for it now. 

Why's that confusing? Would you rather Sophos releases absolutely-nothing and continues that trend?

I'd rather something (anything) to nothing.

A2Razor said:

Why's that confusing? Would you rather Sophos releases absolutely-nothing and continues that trend?

I'd rather something (anything) to nothing.

I more vote for LYING! Start a poll?

It's PR 101.

If they are involved in a situation or transaction that they cannot publicly discuss, then when asked about what customers should do, or about what is going on, they should state that they cannot comment at this time.  Period.

Under no circumstances should they EVER give FALSE information.  That is simply asking to have your reputation destroyed.  And it is always unnecessary.

I don't know if they gave false information or not, but if not, it will be a fascinating industry lesson to learn how a broken server caused a public company  -- that is in the business of computer networking and security -- with over a half billion dollars in sales and over 3,000 employees -- to completely shut down the operations of one of their products for going on several *MONTHS*.

That story will be a case study in how NOT to manage your computer resources for college IT courses across the planet for decades!

Else it will be a case study in B schools for how NOT to handle PR.

Do you think they are lying about their other products too? You really have to wonder.

Quick update - I am still waiting on ensuring a few things on our before I give our next update (which should have way more information for everyone). Stay tuned.

Yawn [:@]

Hacked by Russians?  Ransomware attack?  That wouldn't be a good look for a network security company.

It's getting mysteriouser and mysteriouser...

I see that you have made some changes in the forum though.  That smacks of some kind of continuity.  It's a good sign, but still leaves open the question of why you would allow the product to suffer and loose both immediate revenue and customers without some catastrophic change or problem.

Hope to find out the backstory here soon.

I think the worst case would be that Sophos announces it is discontinuing and shelving the product without allowing it to be further developed by anyone or publicly available anymore.  That would be a terrible ending.  And at this point, based on the events that have taken place so far, this scenario can't yet be ruled out.  My mind wanders...lack of information leads to that kind of depressing speculation.

I agree that would be a terrible ending. The good news is that we're not planning on shelving the product without allowing it to be further developed.  

I agree that would be a terrible ending. The good news is that we're not planning on shelving the product without allowing it to be further developed.  

Thank you for ruling that out Seth.

I can also think of a best case scenario which I won't elaborate on.

I'm happy to say that nothing that has happened so far rules that one out either. [8-|]