If Gibson cared about Users.....they should have warned those at least who have large production houses based on Sonar early on.....so complete businesses' with multiple employees wouldn't potentially have livelihoods put in jeopardy.

*That rules me out, but that's ok.

Edited: to eliminate name calling (what I'd really like to say)

In reality, if you're running a production business, then the end of life of an individual piece of software is not going to create a crisis. I work every day in Sonar, and have continued to every day since the announcement. I've got plenty of time to plan a transition.

HARDDRlVER
I have a question, perhaps two.
1. Concerning disabling the Internet;
What about things like Waves or other plugins which need to update periodically, or simply purchasing on the web?

2. Perhaps not a question but an observation;
The last thing I want to do is move to another DAW. Splat was my first and only 'wife'. Its way too soon to remarry.

Also, with Splat you got Melodyne Essentials and some adpaks from Addictive Drums. Can those be moved to a new daw?

But what happens if we continue to carefully and successfully use Splat for some time into the future...find new software to add to it, only to find the 'new' software not compatible with our Splat? And the further we take Sonar, the more ancient it becomes...

The main concern about being online is any major Windows updates. Updates to other software is another concern, I'm not convinced that being offline is the answer you just need to make sure that updates don't apply automatically to avoid something breaking and not knowing what broke it.
 
As long as third parties like Waves claim Sonar support then we should be OK. I think they will for a while as a platform that does not change is "easy" to support. VST 2 for example should be good issues might come with VST 3 as that still seems to be a work in progress. For third parties like Waves there is a great opportunity in marketing to those of us who choose to stay on Sonar as Cakewalk won't be taking our cash so they can.
 
I have not seen a definitive list of what VSTs will and will not work outside of Sonar but I do know that a lot of the bundled content is usable in other hosts. 
 
For Melodyne and Addictive Drums don't forget that we also get the standalone versions so they are definitely usable even if we need to change our workflow, 

SO it seems that authorization will be taken care of (see sticky post), or at least we have assurances from Noel to that effect. That's good and takes the immediate pressure off, as while it's possible that Windows will eventually break something essential it's unlikely to happen next week. So I'm going to continue using Sonar for the foreseeable future, while gradually poking away at making transferable backups of any and all important older tracks I might one day want to dig back into - stems, at the very least, and/or individual rendered tracks, and/or MIDI and vst/i presets where that makes sense. Meanwhile I'm going to explore other options a bit more rather than jumping on something right away - I already have some options licensed and will start with those rather than feeling like I absolutely have to transition ASAP to Cubase or S1pro, making a snap decision based on a limited-time crossgrade option or Black Friday sale, however attractive it may seem... money doesn't grow on trees, as the saying goes. And I can say a long slow goodbye to Sonar on my own terms. It will take some time to get over the disappointment, but life goes on. 

I wonder if that offline authorization will include all products, plugins etc?

wetdentist
i really hope that we will be able to download all of our licensed products

I have the 1tb external drive downloading all of my Cakewalk files from the website (Just in case).

subtlearts
I wonder if that offline authorization will include all products, plugins etc?

I would hope it would include everything that is currently managed by the remote licensing system.

I'm really not to sure why gibson wouldn't try to sell this off or fight to keep this as their breadwinner rather then what they intend on focusing their attention to... which is a largely overly produced market place as it is. I just downloaded trials for reaper, ableton 9, cubase in a bid to get a program compatible with addictive drums 2.... and these programs are horrible. I mean by user friendly standards they are all no where near sonar standards. Features don't even touch on it. When i used ableton i thought to myself, these are DOS day graphics and user commands.....and that midi bar is terrible!!! i hear things about this presonus program... well it's everywhere really - but according to XLN it's not a supported host for AD2 and i've invested a lot of money in this software so this is a must for me.
 
Gibson, why get rid  of what should be an industry leading program for home studios and professional studios. I just don't get it. Sell it all on Gibson, get what you can, or sell it cheap so you can give back to the people you have taken from and let this greatness live on. 
 
now i'm off to continue using my platinum until i'm absolutely forced against my will to use something else and even then i will try to find a hack to make it live on!!!

I'm glad i purchased Studio One and Mixbus but I only did so to see if I would like them over sonar. Out of all the DAWs I demo'd over the years Sonar was the easiest to learn. It just made sense to me. I know the Bakers will do ok for themselves because they are a good at what they do. I guess the moral of the story here is never put all your eggs in one basket. I would think Cakewalk would have to change the activation so we can still use Sonar. Didn't we buy a license for it? Didn't they say we own it? Is there not a legal aspect to this kind of situation?