smallstonefan
There are some good perspectives here...

Wow, your post really nailed it. A perfect summary of the situation. 
 
One thing I'd like to emphasize is that Cakewalk's future is no longer in doubt. Gibson is very committed to this venture, and Heny J has been generous in letting me spend time on Cakewalk given everything that needs to be done around here.
 
What I like most about Cakewalk is that it's populated by people who are basically just like the rest of us in these forums. There are definite benefits when the people calling the shots depend on their own products 
 
 

Thanks Craig. This is something I eat, sleep and breath everyday. 
 
We're all in this together. :)

All I have to input here at the moment is regarding "the 70 bugs".  That's 70 bugs that have threads here.  Do you have access to the problem reporting system at Cakewalk?  I have to imagine that the total number of Sonar users is nowhere near represented here on the forum.  That 70 bugs list is definitely important, but probably about as representative of the whole of Sonar users as the forum user-base is.  I'd be willing to bet that there are quite a number of bugs outside of this list, some of which might be show stoppers that haven't been pointed out here and many more that are "irrelevant" to most users (which will piss off the ones who reported them and "need" them to be fixed or their lives can't go on).

I certainly won't disagree with most of that. There is no way the forums list could be any way near as comprehensive as Cakewalks. However I suspect if there were serious issues that haven't been fixed yet they would have easily made their way onto the forum list by now. Forum noise is generally an extremely good indicator of a showstopper and I'd be extremely surprised if a serious issue wouldn't be commented about in these forums considering how long the product has been out. Priority is of course always in Cakewalks hands as it should be.

I've heard rumours (sp!) that many CW users never frequent or even visit these forums at all.   So in their case an issue may never show up here.    Shame though IMHO - it's such a great resource and community.
 

The forum is a good place to seek confirmation of bugs for two reasons - think of how many times someone has thought there was a bug, only to find out it was pilot error or some system issue, or the reverse when people find a bug and others can confirm and reproduce. However, the #1 way to deal with bugs and the only one that expedites the fixing process is to enter them into the company's bug tracking system. The forum is not a good venue for tracking because it doesn't "connect" to the bug-tracking world within Cakewalk.
 
Forum "noise" is helpful from an anecdotal standpoint, but if the people at Cakewalk think a bug is serious and needs to be fixed, they will do so regardless of whether people complain about it. Also bugs can be tricky. I found one seemingly very minor bug that I would never have complained about because it seemed trivial. But I entered it into the system, Noel checked it out, and he found that it actually was a manifestation of a more serious bug that was not minor. So, it went through the system and was fixed. By doing so, it fixed some other issues as well. 
 
 

Anderton. I found one seemingly very minor bug that I would never have complained about because it seemed trivial. But I entered it into the system, Noel checked it out, and he found that it actually was a manifestation of a more serious bug that was not minor.

There is no such thing as a minor or trivial bug. A bug is a bug. Whether its a typo in the code that compiles correctly but gives the wrong results, or the programmer simply getting something wrong.
 
Why is there no such thing as a minor bug?  As Craig pointed out, some bugs can be the manifestation of other bugs.  Fix one and you fix several other things by default.
But leave in what you think is a "minor" bug that nobody is bothered about because there are 35 officially posted workarounds, half of which are easier to use than the original feature, and you're laying the foundation for disaster in future releases where new features rely on the output of the old code which has a "minor" bug.
The new feature may work perfectly and be totally bug free, but in certain circumstances which may or may not be life changing the old "minor" bug rears its head and the new feature doesn't work..
 
Everyone reports the new feature doesn't work, crashes their system, drives away their clients, abducted their children, etc, etc.  The devs spend weeks going through the code and can't find anything wrong. Because there is nothing wrong...  It's an old "minor" bug from 3 releases ago that was deemed to trivial to fix...
 
If you're going to release code, do your best to make sure there are no mistakes in it.
When bugs are reported, FIX THEM.

Traditionally bugs are measured in terms of impact and severity. From that info they may be triaged i.e. Trivial, minor, major, showstopper. However often developers get involved in the decision making process in a major way and quite often only the quick fixes get fixed which only suits the developer because they are viewed as the boss. I've seen this happen with my own eyes many times.

This is clearly not happening under Gibson/Cake you just need to look at the service pack release notes and look at the success of X3E. However it may have happened in the past under previous management (pure speculation).

In a perfect world with unlimited funding, there would still be bugs.
 
It's all a compromise.  Even with well over 90% market share, Windows has all kinds of bugs, some of which have been around for quite a long time.
 
Cakewalk does a pretty good job of creating and releasing hot fixes for identified 'show stoppers', and generally release several sets of maintenance - sometimes with additional features.  Major work tends to get rolled into the next full release.
 
I believe there are indeed multiple levels of severity of bugs, from annoyances to show stoppers, in terms of the effects those bugs have on the user base.  There are also different levels of maintenance required to address each bug.  What may seem like it should be a trivial fix can actually be a coding nightmare, where logic for the correction has to also take into account working around bugs in things like Windows, which greatly complicate things.
 
Bugs also differ greatly in the level of impact to the user base, and that too has to be taken into account, when choosing what to apply development funds and folks to, for a given release.
 
In the end, some number of bugs will get fixed, some will not, and some new ones will get introduced with the inclusion of added features.  It is the reality of software and development.
 
Bob Bone
 

Hey all,
 
Well I had to miss out on the sale, unfortunately. But thank you for all the input and lively discourse anyway.
 
Guess I'll just have to make due with X2 'til either I can scrounge up enough extra funds for the standard upgrade price, or another big sale rolls around...
 
Thanks again, guys.