I'm not sure what part of the grieving process this is (really reaching stage?), but the staff is very unlikely in a position to absorb millions in debt. The bakers would probably fair better starting their own company from the ground up instead of attempting to save a sinking ship. As if Gibson would just give them the company while desperately trying to raise funds. Anyone buying Cakewalk has to have deep enough pockets to absorb an initial hit. If the bakers started their own DAW, it would likely not be Sonar because Gibson still owns code.
Not panning the idea of a solution, but hopefully someone comes up with something more workable than programmers suddenly becoming business miracle workers.
I agree that MS siphoning off bakers for potential original product sounds more likely than MS trying to market what will now be viewed rightly or wrongly as a failed product. Dead products rarely come back and when the ydo, it is usually in a stripped down, bargain basement form.
Besides, have you looked at what MS does to their acquisitions?
I think the Sweetwater (or other vendor) is workable because they have the ability to push product. Their is precedence for this. The downside is it typically means the product is lesser quality to keep costs down. A good example of this is Musicians Friend/Guitar Center buying rights to Simmons Drum Brand name. Simmons was once synonymous with electronic drums, but are now just cheap entry level drums.
For me, the best case scenario is code is made open source with several competing products forking from this code that use best elements of Sonar while addressing longstanding issues. This could lead to a new product that has the familiarity of Sonar but leaves behind the stigma of what is largely considered failure. Krystal was a DAW that never took off. The makers of Krystal worked with Presonus to create studio one. S1 in no way reminds me of Krystal, yet it sprang from same well.