AndrewLMacaulay
Trying to answer a real concern given the current (and likely future) unavailability of cakewalk.com, would it be possible for you to host an archive (taken from all sources there are, including members of the community) of ALL current and previous versions of all of the downloads/installers from the Cakewalk library, including older installers like the pre UP3 Rapture Pro library packs that have since disappeared?
This would be a great service to the community (but will take disk space/bandwidth), and given the way licencing works at the moment, should not cause any licence issues for Gibson and Cakewalk - and if, by some chance, there does land up someone taking on the Cakewalk name and product, this can always be deleted at that point.
If not, just having an exchange for missing installers would be a great service as well.
The oldest stuff is going to be a problem, because you can't get those things from the CW server even now. But that's been the case for awhile, and hopefully everyone has those backed up already. Remembering
what to back up, and finding the files, that's the challenge. Fortunately, sample and patch libraries don't need an installer if you back them up in their installed context so that their file structures are preserved.
Current stuff is not a problem (yet). When you run CCC, it downloads installers and runs them. The installers themselves are stored on your local drive and are not automatically deleted after CCC executes them. So you already have everything you need to store somewhere safe, and everything you'll need to re-install after CCC stops working.
This just means a common archive isn't going to help much, except as a convenience or if you realize too late that you'd forgotten to back something up.
The bigger issue is challenge-response authorization, because that depends on a server. Panu's a clever guy, but even if he could write a program that emulates a C/R response he'd be breaking some international copyright law. So there's not much we as a community can do about re-authorizing your Cakewalk software. We have no choice but to assume that it won't be a problem because we'll be given a means for self-authorization if the servers are shut down. It's actually a pretty safe assumption, given that a plan is already in place to do just that.
We're discussing the topic of SONAR's longterm viability
here.