If Gibson is not going to do anything then maybe they would not mind turning it into an open source project.

Brian Walton
 
Who exactly are you suggesting fault resides with then?
 
Fully aware that it wasn't hugely popular in terms of sales.  As a brand under the umbrella, they were responsible for getting the marketing word out to show people it was in fact one of the best DAWs ever created.  
 
The problem was not the quality of the product, and there are enough consumers in the market place to have kept them in business (otherwise these lesser DAWs would be closing shop).

Sonar was "one of the best DAW's ever created" mainly on paper. For a long time, it's been beset by stability issues, bugs and other weirdness which not only stifle creativity but also in some cases actually destroy work. Because of this, it developed a negative reputation. This reputation was not the fault of Gibson. 
 
The idea that Sonar was audio production's best kept secret and that the only thing between it and runaway success was "better marketing" is nonsense. There are DAW's out there which perform better and are more stable. All DAW's have a certain number of features which other DAW's don't, or have some things which they do better than other DAW's. 
 
Sonar is a frustrating program for a beginner to get into, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that the way it operates can be very confusing and problematic. For instance, let's say you accidentally (or whimsically) click on the automation lane button on a track. By default, a volume automation envelope appears, even though you didn't ask for one. And if you aren't aware of this and don't think to delete it manually, that automation envelope is now holding your fader hostage and will spring it back if you try to move it. Instant beginner frustration. Doesn't help that the manual is so full of outdated info and outright errors. Sonar also has a ton of MIDI issues which cause a tremendous amount of frustration - for instance, MIDI crosstalk sending MIDI to places where it shouldn't be (something I've grappled with constantly). And I've already gone into Sonar losing plugin settings on a regular basis. It's when you try another DAW and find that, not only is it smoother and more stable than Sonar, and not only does it have a ton of very useful design features that Sonar was lacking, but that it actually doesn't suffer from the same catastrophic problems as Sonar, you realize that part of the problem was the quality of the product. 
 
And again, you can only blame Gibson so much for that. 

Brandon2000
Will anyone anywhere ever put their faith in a subscription type system for purchasing/using/leasing/licensing software anymore? This could be a lesson to the other big boys out there that no one is immune from this sort of thing.

Paying for features forces the programmers to satisfy users needs or starve.
Subscriptions mean paying in advance with no idea what you are going to get.
But it IS what seems to happen to mature products. Like Microsoft Office.

@Sharke
I don't understand your point in trashing Sonar and telling us how terrible it is?
Do you think we are all idiots and have nothing better to do than use a daw that hinders us at every turn? Jeeezzzz!
Hey, I love sonar because it just keeps freezing on me, etc, etc, etc, etc.................
 
***Or perhaps, just perhaps, for many (MOST) of us it works fine for what we do and we are (were) happy with it?
 
 

<delete>

stratman70
@Sharke
I don't understand your point in trashing Sonar and telling us how terrible it is?
Do you think we are all idiots and have nothing better to do than use a daw that hinders us at every turn? Jeeezzzz!
Hey, I love sonar because it just keeps freezing on me, etc, etc, etc, etc.................
 
***Or perhaps, just perhaps, for many (MOST) of us it works fine for what we do and we are (were) happy with it?
 

 
Like many in this whole discussion, you're missing the point and taking everything too personally. 
 
Whether or not Sonar works "fine" for you is not relevant in the question of why Sonar was not a popular DAW. 
 
The fact is that Sonar did end up with a reputation for being buggy and unstable, and that reputation didn't come about for no reason. If you use the program for basic recording/editing/mixing tasks then you might not even come across some of the problems which made Sonar so frustrating for some of us. Indeed, when I first start a project in Sonar, it works just fine. Once the project gets over a certain size and age and is full of synths and MIDI flying around in all directions and has 100+ tracks and lots of complex routing etc, then you start to see some serious problems, and I see them on a daily basis. When a DAW is destroying mixes that you've spent hours on because it can't even retain your plugin settings properly, that's an extremely serious problem which deserves to be talked about openly regardless of whether or not people get offended because you're "trashing" a program that they love. 
 
And I bring this up, only because a lot of people seem to be completely baffled as to why Sonar isn't the #1 DAW and why it had the reputation it did. I hear people saying things like Sonar is the hands down best DAW in the universe and that other DAW's don't even come close. It's just not true. 
 

Better the bugs you know than the ones yet to be encountered on another DAW.
I love Sonar and all its bugs.

LJBIs this a classic case of the Big Corporation agenda won out over the free-thinking smaller guy, I wonder.

Yeah, the suits upstairs weren't able to maintain their luxury lifestyle. They call it, "following the money."
 

Sadly...
So, now I am wondering how much of my investment in Sonar Platinum and related updates/instruments can be used with Cubase Pro?  And is Steinberg still offering crossgrade pricing for Sonar users?
(sorry if this has been asked already)

deswind
Better the bugs you know than the ones yet to be encountered on another DAW.
I love Sonar and all its bugs.

And that's why it wasn't newbie friendly.