I've gone through the shock and reality of what has happened.  To say the least, I felt depressed.  But that is turning to moving on.  I have no expectations that someone will buy up Cakewalk and keep it going.  If someone does, that would be fantastic.  If no one does, then so be it.  Albert Ellis wrote a book titled "How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable about Anything--yes, Anything"!  In the book it talks about dealing with tragic situations and dealing with them.  The focus of the book relies on the following statement and saying to yourself,  "I wish this had not happened, there is nothing I can do about it, but my life will still go on and I can still be reasonably happy".  
 
I realize that there is no amount of wishing that will bring Sonar back.  But there are plenty of excellent options out there.  Sweetwater has on their website a Cubase 9.5 Competitive Crossgrade for current owners of a select group of DAW owners.  The list includes Sonar Platinum/Producer.  The Crossgrade is $324.00.  Cubase 9.5 is $545.00 regular price and there is an option for 3 easy payments.  
 
So in closing, I will say "I wish this had not happened, there is nothing I can do about it, so I bought Cubase 9.5 Competitive Crossgrade for $324.00. My life will still go on,  and I'm going to be REALLY HAPPY"!

Jarsve
Should we make a petition page to ask Microsoft rescue Sonar and make it like a Office system? 

It would be great if anyone could continue it, although with Microsoft I'd find it ironic based on the fact I was stung by their dealings with Truespace. I'd invested a lot of time and money in that software, then Microsoft bought out the company, offered the product for free to use with their Virtual Earth setup, then they killed it because it wasn't making any money - Doh!


 

Just was trying to purchase another year of rolling updates when I was redirected to that terrible site telling me Cakewalk has become history. 
Catastrophic for the bakers who gave their best for a splendid software, catastrophic for us users who have grown to so many fine features in Cakewalk. Having to learn a new software from scratch is painstaking, so I hope "lifetime" is meant to be at least the next 20 years. 
When I saw that announcement Cakewalk had been bought by Gibson, I had a strange negative feeling. I thought, Gibson is for guitarists. A DAW isn't specialized. Apparently Gibson doesn't care about the Cakewalk users. They had them as paying clients, but now, we CW users weren't really needed after all.
My feeling is that Cakewalk shouldn't be put in the ground after all the achievements.

Anderton

Mark D.
What we've always pined for is good stability, and improvements in ability to install, re-install, re-authorize in new machines. The Command Center is really an example of that kind of progress. In other words a scaled down Sonar that only updates bug fixes plus further portability and in ease of use and upgrading enhancements, with the only advancements being easier to use edit features, audio engine / quality improvements (if that's even possible, well, when 128 bit comes along, I guess). Those things I would happily as someone who's also bought the lifetime free subscription last year pay $100 per year on an added subscription to maintain.

I don't think I'm alone.

You are not. I suggested putting sonar platinum on reverb.com for $99 "as is." That would be enough to keep some developers on retainer to tweak the program, do bug fixes, etc. Every year, I would see having the updated version available for $99 again. I felt this would keep the program alive, the company in existence, and make it easy to build back the brand at a later date if desired. Of course, it was ignored. But I still think it was a good idea.

You could combine the two suggestions; a subscription for support releases (predictable income) + selling the product on Reverb.  The trick is setting the subscription level to be attractive to all. For $100 a year you might only get a small number of people willing to subscribe for bug fixes, but for $50 a year you might get more than double.
 
I'm sure there are a lot of people in the community here who would also volunteer to beta or alpha test any releases too. 
 
How easy is it to set up a petition here?
 

nzpaul

Jarsve
Should we make a petition page to ask Microsoft rescue Sonar and make it like a Office system? 

It would be great if anyone could continue it, although with Microsoft I'd find it ironic based on the fact I was stung by their dealings with Truespace. I'd invested a lot of time and money in that software, then Microsoft bought out the company, offered the product for free to use with their Virtual Earth setup, then they killed it because it wasn't making any money - Doh!


 

That's a bummer. But making a petition to make Microsoft buy out Cakewalk, and make Sonar a paid system like office and office 365. And Music Maker can be migrated to store. I think most of us gladly will pay $15-20 a month for Sonar like for Office 365. I don’t remember the exact sum in $ for Office 365 because I pay in Norwegian Kroner. And of course Microsoft will have to put their own calculated price on this. We might not get monthly updates out of this. Maybe 2 updates a year like Windows, but that is way better than other solutions. Microsoft even has a gigantic insider user base. And by this we can change how Sonar develop in the future. I’m an insider myself and has been since the start. It really works. What we say they listen to. Getting cakewalk under this is a golden opportunity. They might rebrand it. Change file endings *.cwp and *.cwb too. But as Cakewalk did before. Make it backward compatible.

Jarsve
That's a bummer. But making a petition to make Microsoft buy out Cakewalk, and make Sonar a paid system like office and office 365. And Music Maker can be migrated to store. I think most of us gladly will pay $15-20 a month for Sonar like for Office 365. I don’t remember the exact sum in $ for Office 365 because I pay in Norwegian Kroner. And of course Microsoft will have to put their own calculated price on this. We might not get monthly updates out of this. Maybe 2 updates a year like Windows, but that is way better than other solutions. Microsoft even has a gigantic insider user base. And by this we can change how Sonar develop in the future. I’m an insider myself and has been since the start. It really works. What we say they listen to. Getting cakewalk under this is a golden opportunity. They might rebrand it. Change file endings *.cwp and *.cwb too. But as Cakewalk did before. Make it backward compatible.

I agree, anyone taking over would be a good thing. Just reflecting on my previous post about petitioning Gibson, I suppose the problem is if they're that close to bankruptcy, then we'd just be flogging a dead dog :(
 
I'm sure the lifetime subscription offer can be dropped as part of the deal. 
 
We could set up a petition on change.org
 
It would of course need both parties to come to the table. 
 
 

nzpaul

Jarsve
That's a bummer. But making a petition to make Microsoft buy out Cakewalk, and make Sonar a paid system like office and office 365. And Music Maker can be migrated to store. I think most of us gladly will pay $15-20 a month for Sonar like for Office 365. I don’t remember the exact sum in $ for Office 365 because I pay in Norwegian Kroner. And of course Microsoft will have to put their own calculated price on this. We might not get monthly updates out of this. Maybe 2 updates a year like Windows, but that is way better than other solutions. Microsoft even has a gigantic insider user base. And by this we can change how Sonar develop in the future. I’m an insider myself and has been since the start. It really works. What we say they listen to. Getting cakewalk under this is a golden opportunity. They might rebrand it. Change file endings *.cwp and *.cwb too. But as Cakewalk did before. Make it backward compatible.

I agree, anyone taking over would be a good thing. Just reflecting on my previous post about petitioning Gibson, I suppose the problem is if they're that close to bankruptcy, then we'd just be flogging a dead dog :(
 
I'm sure the lifetime subscription offer can be dropped as part of the deal. 
 
We could set up a petition on change.org
 
It would of course need both parties to come to the table. 
 
 

i made one here Microsoft. Please rescue Cakewalk and Sonar out of Gibson.

Well I sure would NOT be happy to pay per month for a software I have paid for for almost 3 decades. 
Best idea is let us re authorize and take our chances with OS. I can run Win 8.1x64 forever (well in my lifetime, I'm old) I can put win 10 on my laptop if i feel a need to. which I don't.

stratman70
Well I sure would NOT be happy to pay per month for a software I have paid for for almost 3 decades. 
Best idea is let us re authorize and take our chances with OS. I can run Win 8.1x64 forever (well in my lifetime, I'm old) I can put win 10 on my laptop if i feel a need to. which I don't.

I understand that. But that is between Gibson and you. And they have to pay you back.

garry
Life happens. No more Cakewalk updates. Sucks, but I can live with that. My current version of SPlat works just fine for my needs. All I want is the ability to re-install my lifetime license software without having to phone home to a server that may or may not be running when/if I need it.

Exactly...........This is the Best scenario.    IMHO of course!