mettelus
Bottom line to legal action is that a company is only going to pursue damage mitigation or loss of revenue (neither of which apply). If they cannot get a dime from you (if you don't sell it, there is no claim against you) and you are not damaging their product (which they already publicly bailed on), then they are not going to spend millions in legal fees to recoup nothing. Also in such a setting, a company who has proven no corporate ethics with conduct, you would come off like a saint for providing a free service to benefit customers who were abandoned.

A good point.

This might be of interest to you. Its called ProjectScope and it was developed by Mark Adamczyk. It is a browser that shows all of the information within the Sonar Project file.
 

 
The program is free. You can find it at http://adamczyk.com/miscellaneous-files
 
Hope that helps!!

Interesting question azslow3. At first didn't think much of it, but once I understood what your really asking...Good point.
 
As some here have stated, the new digital world we live in the laws have not kept up. And once you move out into the international world, it gets even more complicated.
 
I side with the "you own your IP no matter what container is holding it" camp. And I believe that fair use would come into play.
 
But in the end, it would take a court of law to make all this speculation legal and binding.

Someone help me out here. I obviously don't understand what people are talking about here. I'm able to open a project from Sonar in Reaper, I just export the sonar as a midi file, and import it into reaper. I have to do a lot of configuring of synths, midi routing etc, but it's very doable. So what exactly is different about what's being discussed here?

Ya sorry for my first answer, I should have realized who was asking it and why. Now I see and it is worth wasting brain cells on.. a fare few too. 
 
At worst if your worried about being busted, stay underground. There already some of that happening here that I'm sworn to secrecy about so cannot even hint. We have a huge member list. 
 
Or another idea might be PM Noel and just ask him what he thinks. They might say it's a great idea thank you.
 

Such an app to translate to Reaper files would be marvelous. I imagine a dialog where you'd locate the CWP file, check some boxes to specify which elements of the project file you wish to be reproduced, and then provide a name for the Reaper file. Simples! 

@azslow3
I've also been considering this.
 
Here's a link to article 6 of the EU directive (2009/24/EC) on the legal protection of computer programs.
http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/text.jsp?file_id=208108#LinkTarget_129
 
So, as you're in the EU it would be perfectly legal to reverse engineer the .cwp file format & (if I'm reading the directive correctly) the sonar binary, with the purpose of creating a tool to allow interoperability. eg. conversion to another file format.
 
You would also be free to sell such a tool in the EU.  Not sure about the US though.

michael diemer
Someone help me out here. I obviously don't understand what people are talking about here. I'm able to open a project from Sonar in Reaper, I just export the sonar as a midi file, and import it into reaper. I have to do a lot of configuring of synths, midi routing etc, but it's very doable. So what exactly is different about what's being discussed here?

There is so much to a Sonar project than just MIDI, or audio for that matter. The configuring of synths and routing is just part of it. Then you have automation envelopes, clip edits, clip based FX, fades and probably a whole bunch of other stuff I'm not thinking of. 
 
Even exporting audio stems doesn't give you the full picture with your audio clips. Many of your audio clips will have been trimmed from a larger clip, and the trimmed data is still there if you drag the edge of the clip out to reveal it. I will often go back to clips and readjust the trim points to reveal or hide more of the underlying clip - obviously if you bounce the whole track to a stem, these trim points (and everything beyond them) are lost. 
 
I've had to recreate full projects within Sonar itself, and even that was incredibly time consuming. In software, anything that is automatable should be automated. Any app which speeds up the process would be a boon. 

I see. Thanks that helps. My use of Sonar is not very deep, so I don't have these issues. Funny, I compose for full orchestra, with many instruments, but it's all midi and the FX are quite basic. Just interested in halfway decent mockups, really. But most folks are doing audio, or audio plus midi, and are much deeper into the software than I ever go. So a handful of instruments can be way more complex than what I do with an entire orchestra.
 
That's what is so amazing about Sonar. We can all do what we need to do with it. Such a deep, versatile program. How can they pull the plug on it? There has to be a way to save it.

This is interesting. Good thing is most of my projects are all audio, very little MIDI.  However, I've just been working on getting all my old cwb bundle files converted to cwp project files. I figure that way at least I'll have all the audio separate and I can re-create the project in another DAW. After it's converted I've tried importing one of the audio wav files out of a Sonar project file into a track in Mixcraft, and it imported just fine.
 
The problem I'm seeing ahead is that although it gives me the audio, it does not place it in the same spot on the timeline as it was in the original Sonar project. So that means I'll preserve the audio, but won't have any way of knowing exactly where on the timeline it starts and stops. So as far as I can tell it will be guesswork for that part, unless anyone here has an solution for that? Appreciate any suggestions! Thanks
MM