It just occurred to me that the solution to the Cakewalk Sonar situation would be to have
Band in a Box purchase the software from Gibson.
 
BIAB had been highly successful since the DOS days and knows music software.
They have continued to grow and built excellent products.
They have excellent programmers and know the business inside and out.
They are a stable company.
Solution found!

How much would you be willing to pay for very old code that is riddled with bugs. We are all so used to Sonars bugs that we invent work arounds and after a while we forget they are there. 
No one will want Sonar's old code. Much easier to hire the old employees and write your own. 

Cactus Music
How much would you be willing to pay for very old code that is riddled with bugs. We are all so used to Sonars bugs that we invent work arounds and after a while we forget they are there. 
No one will want Sonar's old code. Much easier to hire the old employees and write your own. 

That's not exactly right. Bugs are a part of any code. The codebase of Sonar is huge. There will most likely be patents on some parts of the code. To code a robust, fully featured DAW from scratch would take a very long time - look at Studio One for example. Its feature set is comparably light because it's only been in development for 11 years as opposed to 30 years for Sonar. If I were a software company looking to create a new DAW I would spend good money purchasing Sonar's code, even if it's just to take the good bits out and implement them rather than reinventing the wheel at every step. This is why, with the recent news that Microsoft is developing a DAW for Windows to compete with Apple's Logic Pro, I suspect that MS approached Gibbons with an irresistible offer for the code only, so they can take it in-house, leaving Cakewalk to be shut down. Even with the resources of MS, developing a DAW from scratch to compete with Apple's Logic would take many years. It would be far quicker, more efficient and cost-effective to take an existing, established, tried and tested, industry-leading, Windows only DAW off the hands of a struggling company (before that company collapses) and use that existing code in their product. Microsoft was working very closely with Cakewalk in recent times, maybe grooming them in preparation for a Sonar takeover.

35mm

Cactus Music
How much would you be willing to pay for very old code that is riddled with bugs. We are all so used to Sonars bugs that we invent work arounds and after a while we forget they are there. 
No one will want Sonar's old code. Much easier to hire the old employees and write your own. 

That's not exactly right. 

I think Johnny is probably much closer to the truth than speculating microsoft want to acquire the code from Gibson. The cost of that 30year development by many different coders is that there are layers of outdated code that may well have not been touched in decades. That is why the bakers have not fixed very obvious long term bugs. The dependencies would be mind boggling so It would simply break more than it would fix. Also, now that I have something to compare it to, Sonar is slow. Dont get me wrong - I still love it and resisted change for 25 years, but Johnny's right. If windows were looking to take over a DAW and include it for general distribution, they need it to be simpler and faster.
 
At least that's my wild speculative take on this unfortunate situation.

Unfortunately I don't believe that Microsoft will buy a DAW.
In the last years Microsoft had also Frontpage or Expression Web - and Microsoft let the web development software die. And I read from a lot of people that Apple has done very little development with Logic.

Thats why Sonar will rise again. No one can kill a software this good.
No one is stupid enough to do it.
It will return. Question is under whoms flag. Gibson? Yamaha? Microsoft? Someone new?
Its just a question of time. It will happen.
Its like desolving a band and then reforming it some time later on. With some of its old members gone and new ones to take their place. Or maybe do it as a trio insted of a quintet.
A good software is allways a good software.
It will rise again.

Would be an interesting lawsuit -  Gibson owes money for alleged false advertising - as compensation - provides the code to another company.
 
I see that California has taken the lead on some class actions through their DOJ - maybe someone in California can contact the California Attorney General's Office.
 
I wonder how many users are in California?  I would think quite a few.

THambrecht
Unfortunately I don't believe that Microsoft will buy a DAW.
In the last years Microsoft had also Frontpage or Expression Web - and Microsoft let the web development software die. And I read from a lot of people that Apple has done very little development with Logic.

 
That is because Microsoft mainly push Visual Studio for web and desktop development and you can do lots with the free Community version.  

A load of code (several million lines?) is no good without the people who know how it works, how to install it, together with the infrastructure and support. Once that existing expertise has scattered it's all over.  The only viable solution could be for the developers to buy it and continue it (Gibson and Heritage, if you like) but I doubt there is a business case for a DAW that might have a loyal following but a poor market share. 

While BIAB has been around for a while, you need a company that is actually bigger than Cakewalk to buy Cakewalk.
 
Look at BIAB, the web site they have is still stuck in the 90s.