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I don't think the blame lies with Cakewalk. If it wasn't for Gibson Cakewalk would more than likely still be going onward.

I have to agree with you on this one. What bothers me is this, did Gibson not have a plan for the future? What I mean is, when you acquired a company, you have plans and also contingency plans. 

However, given how things unfolded here, I am left to wondered if Gibson really cared, to me it looks as if Cakewalk was thrown out of a flying airliner with no parachute. 

No need for blame.  Businesses shut down.  It happens.  IMO, Roland and then Gibson provided life support for Cakewalk and kept them going longer.
 
I don't know what I would've done differently because I don't know the details of what they did do.  How could any of us know without being on the inside?
 
Cake had a good run.  Barring a last minute turn around of some sort, I'll just say thanks and offer my best wishes to the folks that work(ed) there.  Cake employed some really smart folks so I won't be surprised in the least if some products come to the market from them under a new name.  Phoenix Audio?
 

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sharke
I should think in reality there's a lot of blame to go round, both Gibson and Cakewalk. At the end of the day Cakewalk were responsible for the direction the program was headed...

But were they? We have no idea what constraints their overlords at Gibson put on them. We don't know if the free lifetime updates were Cakewalk's idea or imposed on them by Gibson.

In terms of Sonar's feature set, no I do not believe that was Gibson's doing. I didn't notice any directional shift in the feature set of the program between Roland and Gibson. I'd agree that the lifetime updates scam was probably Gibson's influence. I'd guess that their bean counters probably saw it as a way to raise some ready cash from a company that was low on revenue.

35mm
I don't think the blame lies with Cakewalk. If it wasn't for Gibson Cakewalk would more than likely still be going onward.

 Hmm, not sure about that really....I doubt that Roland wanted to get rid because of how well they were doing.

Nethertheless it's outrageous that there is no really statement from Gibson. Except they concentrate about their sinking core bussiness. (Afterwards the Gibson manager went to play golf?)
They don't say us how long the authorisation servers will run. They don't say us how we can offline activate our "lifetime" software. No explanation - the customer is in the rain.
As if it's none of Gibson's business.
 
Thank god that I'm from germany and have to translate my statements, because of my restrictes english - if this would be a german forum I have written a lot more.

Marketing. Or lack of.
 
We all know Sonar is a top DAW but it seemed to have developed a negative reputation in some quarters it couldn't shake off. How many times have you seen it slated on sites like Gearslutz by people who have never used it?
 
 

BobF
No need for blame.  Businesses shut down.  It happens.  IMO, Roland and then Gibson provided life support for Cakewalk and kept them going longer.
 
I don't know what I would've done differently because I don't know the details of what they did do.  How could any of us know without being on the inside?
 
Cake had a good run.  Barring a last minute turn around of some sort, I'll just say thanks and offer my best wishes to the folks that work(ed) there.  Cake employed some really smart folks so I won't be surprised in the least if some products come to the market from them under a new name.  Phoenix Audio?
 

Craig Anderton said essentially the same thing when he said Gibson didn't kill CW, it just buried the body.  CW was, and has been, losing money for years.  How long was Gibson supposed to keep pumping cash into a dying brand?
 
CW death isn't Gibson's fault, they just ended up being the one who pulled the plug.

This is currently on the website of Gibson:
 
... Millions of musicians worldwide—including Grammy® and Emmy®-winning producers, composers, sound designers, and engineers—use Cakewalk products daily to produce audio for the professional music, film, broadcast, and video game industries.

From what we know, Gibson's CEO was a cakewalk user, so there was at least some personal interest involved when Gibson bought CW. We were also told from the beginning that CW would remain pretty autonomous. Personally, I think there should have been more synergy, at least on the marketing side. I feel like the developers did some of their best work during the Gibson time, and that was pretty awesome for the installed base. But there obviously wasn't enough growth in the user base, and their revenue stream really seemed to drop in the past few years from my perspective. New products were few and far between, which may have been due to staff reduction, but who knows...

To (potentially) correct myself, an ex-Cakewalk employee has said on Reddit that the lifetime updates idea was actually Cakewalk's idea under Noel's leadership, so maybe it actually was a scheme with good intentions and not a Gibson scam.

https://www.reddit.com/r/...ISAK8R&sh=2dc889b3