Dear Sophos I'm very sorry...

I'll be very surprised if the reason is anything other than them either selling the product, or that the product is locked in some sort of litigation.

What other reason do companies ever have, aside from being held ransom, to not talk about the extremely obvious?

- in this case, the inability to buy and activate software licenses.

I have been a user of Sandboxie since I found in version 2.0 and have loved it and yes, I have as many of my clients using it as I can convince them to.
I have seen it stop Ransomware sold in it it's tacks 
The community that is part of this forum only want the product to be better, and allow us to future influence other people to use it.
I myself have a issue that I presented to SOPHOS and just got fluffed off, I have to come up with a work around and I did. 
I like this product and I want as many people as I can to like the product, but there needs to be some better than the Gray area that I see now
I check the SBIE Beta Version every day to see if anything has changed and it has not. All I do see is the same complaints issued over and over.
Please be more transparent and you will get more of my support.
Bill e. Barrett 

I have a hunch what is going on and I don't think "discontinued" is it (although who knows).

Whatever the explanation, I am shocked at how poorly it was handled by a company of this size that should have far better expertise in handling this sort of thing (or any sort of thing for that matter).  Especially if it is what I think it is.

I don't want to say any more since I'm hoping for the best.

"I don't want to say any more since I'm hoping for the best."

Such a tease!

I found this link in another thread which I didn't read before.

https://www.sophos.com/en-us/lp/invincea.aspx

My guess wasn't that wrong then. I don't think they'd treat Sandboxie differently. If they were to sell it, who'd actually buy an old piece of software like Sandboxie? With all the Windows updates at this point is worth writing it from scratch probably. And I don't know if the brand name has any value.

Ok, this is has gotten ridiculous - and your post is a flat out lie.  There was no making the forum private.  I had to log in just to be able to reply, yet I read it just fine and was NOT a private forum.  Matter of fact, I've been following this afterbirth of a post for weeks without logging in to read the abomination.

The entitlement is beyond out of control with some of you about this product, which was not a surprise that this was an 'as-is' software to begin with, yet you are putting it in a production environment?  That's your stupid mistake.  Now you can live with it.

The original poster - if they are a decision maker for that big of a company - I feel sorry for your company, and you should be ashamed for how badly your post presents yourself.  Grammatical errors, spelling is horrible, no absolute thought at all about the product, it was just a rush to hurry up and bash Sophos.  I can't think of one single person who would represent themselves like that, if you do in fact actually speak the truth about what you do.  It's no wonder you left your company name out of things. 

By the way, I have also bashed on Sophos about some of the really dumb decisions and things that have happened, and by no means a 'fanboi' for the company but you people really take it to another level.

Amodin said:

your post is a flat out lie.  There was no making the forum private.  I had to log in just to be able to reply, yet I read it just fine

Oh, that's a good news. I tested and you're correct, the forum is not private ANYMORE. How you give people no benefit of the doubt is ridiculous instead. Why would I have to lie about something everyone who's reading can check easily?

Amodin said:

The original poster [...] Grammatical errors, spelling is horrible

We've come to this now? Since when that makes someone's point less valid?

Stop being a shill. Insulting and trying to discredit people won't change anything. People are mad for many reasons. Personally I'm not mad if they discontinue the Sandboxie, I don't expect a company to support a product forever. But I don't like their lack of transparency. I'm paying for the software and I expect updates. If they're not going to update it anymore, they have to say it. Sandboxie has builtin support for hundreds of programs, but now they officially provide support only for literally a handful of programs, that's something not easy to accept for me either.

I have been a customer of Sandboxie since 2011 and used it ever since. Sadly, I have been following this fiasco here lurking and facepalming. Now I couldn't lurk anymore and check the forum for news without registering, which at this point feels like another failure move to put a curtain on the situation from the company currently behind the product.

I don't want to sound mean, but this whole fiasco is a 101 guide how to handle difficult situations extremely poorly.

You, as a company and who are currently behind Sandboxie, have the rights to the product that many like to use and pay for. Few things that would be direly needed at Sophos:

1) Have someone engage with the customers and community who knows PR, khows how to handle difficult situations and has experience at communications. No actual news, dates that don't hold up, empty promises on fixes (getting closer to half half a year just repeating and not delivering), actual transparency (even a bit, there's no need to spill out business secrets), even something to earn the trust back on how to recover from the initial situation. At this point, while I hope Sandboxie recovers, I'm not sure I even trust how the Sandboxie performs anymore after seeing the competence with this situation. Which leads to...

2) Software development and management competence. I'm sure the people working there are nice and hard working. Perhaps they are competent too. We can't know that from the outside and because the 1) comms have failed, it also forces me to question the whole competence. I hope you still prove me wrong!

I guess those sum up most of my feelings about this. I didn't mean to post here, but I was forced to register to read here, so might as well post then. At least now you are making more of your customers engage with you. I hope it's an honest two way discussion.

:)

I have no special information that everyone else doesn't have, all I have is a hunch.  But in case the hunch is right I don't want to say anything unhelpful or counterproductive.  Ther'll be plenty of time for that if it turns out to be something deplorable.

If Sophos is discontinuing Sandboxie altogether let's hope they have the decency to at least try to release it to opensource.  It already is earning zero revenue, so they have no revenue to loose.... EXCEPT....

I still have not ruled out the possible implications of the incredible coincidence that the sudden disappearance of Sandboxie occurred at exactly the moment that Microsoft introduced a sandbox in Windows 10.  I would brush this off as a crazy conspiracy theory had I not seen something similar happen with a program that I followed closely in the 90s.  That coincidence opens up a Pandora's box of possibilities.

Ryan Cruze said:

let's hope they have the decency to at least try to release it to opensource

I'd love to see that happening. I don't think it the code would be that useful anymore, or Sophos would use it in its products. Googling, I found this other page:

https://community.sophos.com/kb/en-us/131956

What Invincea features are not included in Sophos Intercept X?
While Sophos Intercept X contains deep learning and many advanced features not included in Invincea products, some Invincea features are not included in Sophos Intercept X.  Invincea browser isolation (container) is not available in Intercept X.  There are currently no plans to support browser isolation (container) in the Intercept X roadmap.

I don't know if Invincea had any other sandboxing software, but I think they're talking about Sandboxie. But they could release the code to the public, even for some just good PR at this point. I don't know how much code would you need to write to fix SBIE's broken features in 1903, but it might still be the start for a something new. I've looked many times for other sandboxing software, but I've never found anything that works like sandboxie.

Ryan Cruze said:

the sudden disappearance of Sandboxie occurred at exactly the moment that Microsoft introduced a sandbox in Windows 10

Exactly. Browsers already have builtin sandboxing, and now Windows Sandbox might be good enough just to test things. I don't know what plans Microsoft has for WS, but right now it's not a replacement for Sandboxie, unfortunately. Also at the moment you can't run other VM software if you enable WS, so it has its limitations.

Sandboxie has still some value for other things though. Video games with online functionality often are not developed following the best practices, and can be insecure and an attack vector. Instead of web browsers and MS Office, Sophos could market SBIE to gamers. "You can safely run any online game in Sandboxie". I mean, I see so much VPN marketing targeted to gamers, I'm sure Sophos could make some money there if they wanted.

"The entitlement is beyond out of control with some of you about this product, which was not a surprise that this was an 'as-is' software to begin with, yet you are putting it in a production environment?  That's your stupid mistake.  Now you can live with it."

^^ @ Amodin: If I was part of the politically-correct crowd, I would describe your post as being hate speech.  But, I abhor political correctness, so...no worries Amodin; I won't define your post as such.  BUT, would you please clarify what you mean by the above, italicized extraction?

"The entitlement is beyond out of control with some of you about this product, which was not a surprise that this was an 'as-is' software to begin with, yet you are putting it in a production environment?  That's your stupid mistake.  Now you can live with it."

^^ @ Amodin: If I was part of the politically-correct crowd, I would describe your post as being hate speech.  But, I abhor political correctness, so...no worries Amodin; I won't define your post as such.  BUT, would you please clarify what you mean by the above, italicized extraction?

First, I think you need to look up the definition of hate speech, because you clearly have no idea what it is.  There is not one mention of any social, racial, religious, ethnicity, disability, sex, orientation or identity group(s) involved in my statement.

Second, I think what I wrote is pretty self-explanatory.  It's a sandbox environment, used, meant and built for testing to not be included in a production environment.  Not to be used for production quality software.  If it breaks, no big deal - you shouldn't be running it like your very own <insert production machine> environment, then go complain about it because your software inside stopped working.  It's even had that disclaimer for years.  The original post, no matter how sorry it is, solidifies that - it's someone who's enviornment broke and they got mad.  Did you even read through any of these posts?  I'm betting not, or you wouldn't be asking that question other than to cause <insert whatever drama laced theme you want>.

You can call it hate speech all you want and be completely incorrect, but it still doesn't change the fact that entitlement has run amuck in this forum over this software and its intended use.

Vivaldo Sagese said:

  

Amodin

your post is a flat out lie.  There was no making the forum private.  I had to log in just to be able to reply, yet I read it just fine

  

Oh, that's a good news. I tested and you're correct, the forum is not private ANYMORE. How you give people no benefit of the doubt is ridiculous instead. Why would I have to lie about something everyone who's reading can check easily?

 Why should I give someone the benefit of the doubt when you don't even check your facts?  It wasn't private.  Hasn't been.  And, thanks for proving my point with your last sentence.  

Amodin01 said:

Second, I think what I wrote is pretty self-explanatory.  It's a sandbox environment, used, meant and built for testing to not be included in a production environment.  Not to be used for production quality software.  If it breaks, no big deal - you shouldn't be running it like your very own <insert production machine> environment, then go complain about it because your software inside stopped working. 

Debatable. You can give disclaimers all you want but if someone pays for software they have a reasonable expectation of usability. In this case most of the complaining I have seen has been about licenses expiring and not being fixed. This falls under a reasonable expectation.

Amodin01 said:

It's even had that disclaimer for years.  The original post, no matter how sorry it is, solidifies that - it's someone who's enviornment broke and they got mad.  Did you even read through any of these posts?  I'm betting not, or you wouldn't be asking that question other than to cause <insert whatever drama laced theme you want>.

Did YOU even read all these posts? The original post has absolutely nothing to do with an environment production or otherwise that broke. The original post simply states due to their piss poor handling of this situation and previous situations handling other commercial software that is/was very much advertised for enterprise use I can't imagine that their support for their current lineup will be much better and it's potentially going to cost them a rather large deal. How people and companies act/react has consequences even on the internet. Saying or doing the wrong thing even for what some people may think is a shitty little product or idea has more than once cost companies online.

Amodin01 said:

 Why should I give someone the benefit of the doubt when you don't even check your facts?  It wasn't private.  Hasn't been.  And, thanks for proving my point with your last sentence.  

Neither did you.

"First, I think you need to look up the definition of hate speech, because you clearly have no idea what it is.  There is not one mention of any social, racial, religious, ethnicity, disability, sex, orientation or identity group(s) involved in my statement."

Thanks for the suggestion.  I did some brief research and here's what I found:

A person hurling insults, making rude statements, or disparaging comments about another person or group is merely exercising his or her right to free speech. This is true even if the person or group targeted by the speaker is a member of a protected class. According to U.S. law, such speech is fully permissible and is not defined as hate speech.  Source: thelawdictionary.org/.../

So, I stand corrected.  Is Amodin 101 guilty of hate speech?  Not by this definition.  Has Amodin 101 expressed insults, rude statements, and disparaging comments in his/her recent posts here.  Me thinks so.  But...it's not hate speech.  Amodin 101 should feel so proud now.

Sorry to all for going off-topic with these couple of posts.  I thought many of the other opinions and concerns expressed in this thread were, and are, legitimate and valid... and I didn't like the critical and rude tone that was introduced by you-know-who.  Do I think expressing disagreement is okay?  You bet.  In fact, I think it's healthy.  But to do so in a pompous, arrogant, and condescending way is not acceptable.     

Amodin01 said:

Why should I give someone the benefit of the doubt when you don't even check your facts?  It wasn't private.  Hasn't been.

The forum itself may not be private, but it sure as hell seems that way when you try to enter it through the sandboxie website.

This forum is still private (requires login) if it's accessed using the forum link on sandboxie.com
For a short period of time it was also private when accessed directly. I had a link to this topic bookmarked a long time ago that I was checking from time to time and all of a sudden it required login.

Anyway we should get back to the important discussion that is what will happen to Sandboxie.
I'm interested to know if Sandboxie will continue to be developed / updated and this secrecy doesn't help at all.

Why I want to know is because I couldn't find any other software that has as many options and does the same things as efficient as Sandboxie does them. Without a good alternative to Sandboxie I'll have to make other plans like migrating all my systems to Linux, but this takes time, so I'd like to know sooner rather than later.

The announcement about Sandboxie's future is now live: 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

Thank you for your patience, our apologies for the delays.  Hopefully this will be taken as good news for everyone.

Seth Geftic said:

Hopefully this will be taken as good news for everyone.

 Wishful thinking, people love to complain no matter what, it's basically everywhere nowadays and any place that insecure little nerds can openly speak/write with no repercussions to what they say, such as hiding behind their computer screen. Do people act like this in the real world? No, because it's childish.

 So just you wait, we'll get people now complain that it's free and going open source...

Welcome to 2019, year of the outrage cultural.

I'm pleased with the news. I just wish it hadn't taken you ~5 months to release.