I haven't given up hope that Cakewalk will be sold for several reasons...
- The servers are still going, and there has been no deadline given for when they will shut down.
- The forum is still here. Gibson could keep the servers going for activation, but there's no real need to keep the forum going unless the company feels the community has value to a potential buyer.
- Gibson has been selling off assets, mostly real estate for now but assets are assets.
- Companies have contacted me that are interested in at least licensing the IP if not doing an outright purchase, and I've passed those along to Gibson. I doubt that the "leads" I sent will amount to anything, but I have to assume there are also companies reaching out to Gibson directly.
- Guitar Center is always the first to "know things." There's no need to get rid of "old stock" because there isn't stock. The fact that they are promoting SONAR as a current product may mean nothing, but it very well may mean something.
- Despite the Gibson hating that's been going on here, Henry Juszkiewicz uses SONAR and he had great respect for the technology the Bakers were able to implement. I think he would not want to see all that work go for nothing, even if it wasn't going to be under the Gibson umbrella. Just because it became untenable to keep supporting a company that lost money every year doesn't mean he would want to see it disappear.
However I don't see a typical music industry company buying Cakewalk because they'll want something cross-platform. Any companies that are heavily into Windows (Acoustica, Magix) already have DAWs. It would likely be a hardware company like Dell, Lenovo, Alienware, etc. to ship with machines, or Microsoft to round out its software portfolio - it doesn't have its own Logic.
Granted it's been over three months since I was fired and knew what was going on internally, and I was gone before Cakewalk was shut down so I don't know what went on afterward. But I was with the company long enough to do informed speculation and unless I'm really offbase, I don't think Gibson
wants to see Cakewalk die. The Guitar Center thing is
quite intriguing. Hmmm...
[Edit] Maybe someone at Guitar Center could comment?
[Edit] And yes, I do realize that everything I'm citing is circumstantial evidence, so don't get your hopes up too high...