從Gea-Suan Lin’s BLOG看到的消息,雖為付費工具卻長期提供免費版本的知名沙盒軟體Sandboxie,
其母公司Sophos日前於該軟體官方頁面中發佈了將讓Sandboxie開源(open source)的公告,
雖然官方並未透露過渡至開源的時程,以至於何時會正式將該計畫釋出尚屬未知,
不過卻有個對免費版用戶而言天大的好消息─在完全過渡至開源專案之前,
那些原先需要付費方能使用的功能…..將會全部解鎖! 免費使用完整功能!
以下為聲明全文:
…..Sophos is excited to announce that we are making Sandboxie a free tool,
with plans to transition it to an open source tool.
This new evolution of Sandboxie is one we are enthusiastic about,
but that does not mean this was an easy decision to make.
Sandboxie has never been a significant component of Sophos’ business,
and we have been exploring options for its future for a while….
…..Frankly, the easiest and least costly decision for Sophos would have been to simply end of life Sandboxie.
However, we love the technology too much to see it fade away.
More importantly, we love the Sandboxie community too much to do that.
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……
…..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.
We will release more information about the open source project as we continue to work on the details……
…..Until the open source transition is completed we have decided to make all restricted features of Sandboxie completely free…..
…..
Sandboxie也算老牌軟體了,雖然母公司強調該軟體並非核心業務,
可單單產品品牌與活躍用戶數量應該就有一定價值,即便不想再投注資源,
拿去賣給流氓軟體公司應也能小賺一筆(誤),這樣乾脆的決定開源實在令人意外呢?
個人稍微查了一下近來沙盒軟體相關新聞,發現微軟已在去年公開Windows Sandbox、
同時預計將於Windows 10企業版加入名為InPrivate Desktop的可拋棄式沙箱功能,
考慮到Windows的市佔率,現在早早退出或許正因於此也說不定?
Sandboxie除了之前Firefox版本60一度有SBIE2205錯誤之外,數年來沒出過什麼差錯,
十分穩定好用,現在就決定退出沙盒競爭似乎有些言之過早(假如上段那真是原因的話)…..
畢竟回想起以前弄Virtual PC時那些偶有出現、令人摸不著頭緒的微妙狀況,
就覺得Sandboxie和Microsoft內建的沙盒哪天競爭起來,鹿死誰手似乎還未可知呢 XD