Many, many years ago when I was running Cakewalk on Windows 3.1, I went to a demo of Opcode StudioVision Pro.  That product was light-years ahead in capability of anything on the market.  I came away from the demo completely stunned.  Sometime after that time, Gibson acquired the product and dumped the most innovative DAW I had ever seen.  Gibson is now doing the same with Cakewalk.  If you search the history of Gibson, there is a trail of train-wrecks of great products being destroyed by this company and many very talented people being cast upon the scrapheap.
 
I will never buy anything Gibson has an association with ever again.  I only stayed with Cakewalk because I was a loyal TwelveTone/Cakewalk user.  Gibson should have done better by our beloved bakers.  I spent 10 years as a CW beta tester between Pro Audio and Sonar.  We testers worked our butts off, but we wanted to, because the attitude of the bakers was fantastic.  I grew to deeply respect both Ron Kuper and Noel Borthwick and all the super dedicated bakers.  I feel like 25 years of my life are going down the drain - what a strange feeling!
 
Very, very sad day.

LJB

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

Yup!!! 

Say...
since they are shutting down, is there  any reason why CW wouldn't just update anyone who wanted it to the latest version before fading away? What's any potential harm in that?

That's disappointing.  I guess the lifetime updates were less of a bargain than it originally appeared.  I might have to do more experimentation with Harrison Mixbus.  I've been using Cakewalk software since 2000 and it's a shame to have to change.  I've really enjoyed Splat.
 

This is indeed really very sad news and my heart goes out to the many dedicated Cakewalk employees who are affected by this announcement. Like many others, I too first started using Cakewalk in the 90s on Windows 3.1. It helped define what computer music is today.
 
The software industry is tough. The music industry is tougher. The intersection of the two is deadly.
 
I purchased SONAR a couple of years ago, but after the death of Sony Vegas I moved to Mac, which of course precluded me from using SONAR.
 
Constant issues with software products being discontinued, DRM, the need for an always-active internet connection and relentless software updates eventually drove me to exclusively using hardware for music production. Whilst I don't have all the bells and whistles of a DAW, I'm happier and more productive. Furthermore, I own the hardware in perpetuity and can use and modify it however I wish.

Wow! I guess I'm moving to Studio One Pro too!
 
Very sad day for me, but my heart goes out to all the employees at Cakewalk. Good luck and God bless.

Wookiee
Been with you since 1992 how sad, lets hope someone will see the good in the software and rejuvenate it with a new owner.

H*** yeah!!!

Couldn't they just change the authorization process as a farewell gift to users so that it's not dependent on their servers? Something similar to Sonar 8.5's authorization?

abacab

Wookiee
Been with you since 1992 how sad, lets hope someone will see the good in the software and rejuvenate it with a new owner.

H*** yeah!!!

If Gibson won't sell it, there's no chance of that, and it's exactly what they done with Slingerland to name just one

On importing: my previous post was about midi. Anyone who has midi projects should take the time time to export them in midi0 and/or midi1 formats, so they can be imported into another program. You will get the notes and CC events, but not all the synth settings. I did that awhile back, when I started working with Reaper. Unless you painstakingly copy down every last setting, as someone suggested, you will have to reconstruct all that. Or you can try to reconstruct it from memory. Another way would be to have both programs opem, with two monitors, and then put in everything right from the values you see in Sonar. I would also export in XML. I can't do it because 8.5 doesn't have it.