While it is a shock to be invested in Sonar and have the rug pulled from underneath us; it is understandable to be upsetting for most of us. But it is not like we suddenly don't have a DAW anymore.
On a light note. Remember when you would upgrade every year and there was a patch or two to fix a few bugs in the interim.
It is a bit like that now.
Sonar is still a very well featured DAW and wont go out of date for a year or two.
I have heard there are still those who keep their Atari's going!
Might as well get some more value out of it for a while.
And set up a dedicated fully backed up PC off the grid to keep it until there really are way better DAWs to migrate to.
We can still stay connected and help each other out.

Indeed, and many of us have indicated our intention to continue using it as long as it can be made to work and authorized, or until something else supercedes it organically. My own point was just that I think it's highly unlikely there was any malicious intent involved at any level of this - I've seen a number of angry rants suggesting that Gibson/Cakewalk knew this was going to happen ages ago, and made a cynical play to extract some cash via the lifetime updates offer. I just don't see it. I think this was a recent decision, made along the lines of what I wrote above, and that we're just the unlucky ones who are affected (along with of course the other major stakeholders in CW, the employees). It sucks, but I highly doubt it was premeditated in any way. It just happened. Sometimes there's no secret dastardly plot, just people who have to make business decisions and who have very different priorities than we do. 

The lifetime subscription offer was a good deal for customers, and brought in some quick cash for the company.
It was a win-win situation.   As others have mentioned, even if I got 12 months of updates after purchasing the lifetime subscription, I got my moneys worth.  I do not regret it at all.  And if I had to do it again, knowing what I know now, I probably STILL would have taken the offer.

I feel duped, but my company makes me feel a little less foolish.

Well after reading these and many more comments I, like so many, kind of knew with all the problems of keeping a company in the black is frigging hard! Cakewalk Sonar is a really great programme and I reckon some of what we see here is the big boys not supporting sales of this product, so many times when I've told people I use Sonar Platinum their response is at best cold … If it had been advertised with the revere that say Pro Tools or Cubase etc had, I really feel Cakewalk would have been a successful . I will keep this for as long as it works … and I bet that will be a long time ... Thankyou Cakewalk for the ability to write and produce my music as a pro!! Fingers crossed for the future of the people who made it happen