Many of you know me as a long time contributor to this forum, so I hope you will read my words with some amount of trust and at least let it enter your logical consideration on what to do about your DAW situation with this Cakewalk news.
 
First - let me say that I'm saddened by this development and wish that it wasn't how it is.  I am a "lifetime" subscriber and, while I think I got my money's worth in updates as we were going, I also know that I will stop using Sonar either now or soon and those benefits will have been lost.  I'm also a hobbyist. I don't make a living doing this or even any money, and I don't get much time from my professional life for my hobbies, so I haven't been that productive with the new features and have no interest in getting bogged down later by software that doesn't work - leading me to have to fix things just to be able to enjoy them.
 
So that's my perspective.
 
There are a lot of posts that have a tone of believing that Sonar will be safe, effectively forever; that as long as the activations work, the software will also and will be able to be re-installed without issue.  I've seen many state that they believe that the Windows Updates that are sure to come - and (for most) are unavoidable to keep an up-to-date system - will not stop Sonar from working.
 
I think that this is incorrect.  I do IT support for a living, running my own small business with several technicians working on small-to-midsized business IT environments.  I have seen a few recent Windows updates roll out that have been quite destructive.  One about a month ago prevented many servers from being able to boot at all.  Of course, this sort of issue would affect ALL DAWs (and other software for that matter), but many others have been software specific. Notably, there was one that came for both Windows 7 and 10 that rendered a few applications for our customers completely inoperable when it came to integration with Excel files - a function needed to be able to use the application for its function in their businesses.  The manufacturers of the software in question (one manufacturing barcode printing application, one enterprise database application using SQL for the backend) simply recommended that either the updates for those systems had to be turned off or an upgrade to the software and/or a patch would be required to get around the problem.  In both cases, the customer was interrupted and lost hours of time, expense, and had to choose between turning off updates (not safe for security) or dealing with a broken application while they await a fix from the vendor.
 
In the case of Cakewalk, that fix would not come.  This would be the effective equivalent of Sonar working fine as long as you didn't want to use any VST effects or instruments.  I don't think that would be a reasonable problem to have.
 
That situation happened over night in all cases.  No warning and basically no sympathy.
 
So for those believing that they won't be affected negatively by this possibility, I think you should strongly consider thinking again, or accepting the "frozen system" methodology to not have to encounter the problem.
 
Myself - I don't have the budget to do much at this time since I don't get a lot of time to "play", but I'm leaning towards Studio One like many others here.  I've downloaded the demo, found my way around, created a drum map for my Pearl Mimic Pro, made sure I understand how all of my external gear works (or doesn't) with the software, and started poking around, watching videos, and experimenting to determine if this is my way forward.  The "deal" that they have to crossgrade out of Sonar at this time will likely entice me to making that a Christmas Gift wish for the year.  Sonar will become a memory.
 
As said, I'm saddened, but I've also had some support issues lately that went unanswered without constant hammering to get a few minor issues corrected - it took a nearly year of badgering for fixes for bugs that had been around since at least X1.  The whole skylight interface, while pretty, lost loads of productivity until the most recent revisions.  Many features that worked well before were inexplicably removed (like track layers) when X1 came along.  Hardware devices (like the short-lived VS700, the Mackie Control mode under X1+ no longer supporting many features it used to (like EQ mode that controlled the Sonitus), the Contour Shuttle Pro not having a working plugin to the software any more, ACT being basically a complete pain and somewhat abandonware) lost function or became completely unsupported and useless.  There are probably tons of reasons why Cakewalk was doomed to inevitable failure - these are just the few I encountered.
 
I hope that we can all continue a sense of community either here or moving along to another shared-software-venture that many of us are sure to take.

It has always been recommended that your music computer be generally disconnected from the internet and to be safe, create numerous restore points can help offset an issue with a windows update.   As stated in many other messages, there are still many people still successfully running sonar 8.5 on Win 7 so there really is no reason to beleive , that by taking a few safety precautions, the same won't hold true for SPLAT.   Create a backup disk, maintain restore points, and don't use your DAW machine for much else than making music and don't allow automatic updates!   That way you can find out if the update was destructive BEFORE installing it .  I also am from an extensive IT background where MANY mission critical applications and businesses purposely DO NOT allow for windows updates and use a frozen image of the operating system for large segments of the corporation.   Freeze you machine if Sonar is working and you will run for years assuming your computer doesn't die and as long as the auth servers are up, even that won;t cause a permanent issue

My updates are permanently disabled.
 

Where I work, a hospital, the IT dept is responsible for 1,000 if not 10,000 of computers. They are on Widows 7 and for good reasons. They need control of the OS. They tell me they have no immediate plans to upgrade the 10,000 computers and that W7 is very stable-- if you control it. They test all updates and when they deem them safe they install them. We all have this choice with W7 and as I just found out W8.1. 
So the heart of the problem with W10 is this is very hard to manage and you loose control and things get trashed. 
 
So, yes, you can buy into that program and get on the endless treadmill of updated every couple of months and continue to put fires out... or You can do like they do where I work, and take control of the OS. Hey, mabey there's a way to control W10,,, but I think you need to be pretty savvy.
 
As I type this on my office computer my DAW is rebuilding itself and Window 8.1 is just updating after I told it to go ahead.. I was so happy to see that good old option " we will inform you of updates and let you choose to when to install them" Yay!  
 
We'll see how this all pans out. I will have 2 desktop DAW's set up. My "downstairs"  one ( for now) will be W10 and kept up to date. Sonar is all up to date and running smooth as silk. Only thing wrong at this point is the XLN nag screen I get after a computer restart. It goes away if I run the installer until the next computer re start. Note, this is not a Sonar issue, This also happened when I opened another DAW and tried to insert AD2. If it continues I will bug XLN for a fix. 
 
My "upstairs" Studio DAW sports a new power supply and a 250 GB EVO Pro SSD. I still had my original W8.1 disk. Once the updates have finished I will transfer the CCC download folder from the original C drive and run CCC. When it's finished I will uninstall CCC. Obviously it will no longer be needed. 
 
I'm looking forward to about 5+ years of this re build and using Sonar as is. 
PS- I downloaded and tried most of the popular DAW's everyone's been fussing over. Sorry for me it was like going back to Sonar 8.5. The one I liked the most because it truly had different mojo was MixBus4... Bought it for $29 US Blk Friday deal. I see a use for it as an Audio only DAW. 

I have an old laptop from 2005. No internet and Windows XP. Everything is still running, but I no longer use the thing, it feels like tough mucus.
 
There are soon faster machines on the market, monitors with high resolution. Sonar will run on a computer without internet for another 8 years - but shure only with the technology of today.
 
after time.... Sonar will not be used anymore, although it's still running, things will get dusty in the basement.
I'm not worried about keeping Sonar running, but I'm afraid to become a Platinum Lifetime Zombie.

Cactus Music
Where I work, a hospital, the IT dept is responsible for 1,000 if not 10,000 of computers. They are on Widows 7 and for good reasons. They need control of the OS. They tell me they have no immediate plans to upgrade the 10,000 computers and that W7 is very stable-- if you control it. 

Well that is actually IT being stick-in-the-mud, not a real legit reason. I say this as a person who works as a lead Windows admin professionally. Why? Because Windows 8 and 10 are extremely stable, in fact I'd bet they run any virtual servers on 2012 (8), 2012R2 (8.1) or 2016 (10). Update control is not a problem for enterprises. You can use WSUS, or another update manager, as you ever have and approve or disapprove updates as needed.
 
Not only that, but enterprises have access to the LTSB branch of Windows 10, which is a version that does not get feature updates yet gets patches. You can to this day be running the original release of Windows 10 and get all the latest security updates on the LTSB branch.
 
The shops that are saying "We stick with 7 because it is stable," are really saying "We stick with 7 because we don't want to learn anything new and do testing." It was the same thing we saw with XP and those shop's then continued to run it (and some still continue to run it) after it went out of support and had plenty of known security issues.

I'm a retired LAN/WAN Network and help desk manager (worked for SSA).  Large corporations, federal agencies and even small businesses do not change OS overnight.  It is a huge expense in both the hardware, software and training.  For those reasons, alone, many stay on older OS'.  Its not that the "current" OS is unstable or bad its the $$$.  Take SSA, they have approx. 1800 client server LAN systems in SSA offices and approx. 55,000 "workstations" (PC's).  The PC's run MS Office and specialized applications.  Consider the cost of upgrading the network, and it happened approx. every 10 years while I worked there.

It's possible that MS might roll out a change that breaks the audio engine of Sonar.  I strongly doubt, though, that they would roll out a change which would prevent SONAR from opening its own files or prevent it from exporting wave and MIDI data.
 
So even if SONAR ceases to become useful as a DAW, it becomes very difficult to conceive a scenario where they could make a change so horrible that I wouldn't be able to at least view my files and reconstruct them in another DAW.
 
And even if that happens, I have the failsafe that I also, per license, have a copy of SONAR on a laptop running Windows 7.

I agree with the original poster here. One thing that worries me for all the people here that are planning to continue using Sonar for as long as possible, particularly the one who rely on it for their income, is what happens when their hardware breaks?
 
It's all well and good to wrap the computer in an isolation force field, but one way or another something is going to happen and by sticking with Sonar your degrees of freedom are extremely limited. Better to move on now while you still have the option to get stuff done with Sonar while you can.

I'm not an IT guy and have no professional experience running computers or networks.
But I DO know that there are options in Windows 10 to prevent it from automatically installing updates.
You have the option to have Windows tell you there are updates available, and ASK if you want to install.
You have the option to only install security updates, with no major feature changes. (the option I chose)
You have the option to delay any updates for up to a year.

And even if an update DID get passed you, chances are if it screwed anything up, it would be a 3rd party plugin authorization issue.

Windows 10 is not the harbinger of doom some people think it is.  Yes, I will be buying Studio One and taking advantage of their sidegrade offer.  But that is only for if and when Sonar Platinum finally kicks the bucket.  I expect to be using Sonar for many years to come, or at least until another DAW comes along that I actually like better.