[HN Gopher] The End of Finale
___________________________________________________________________
The End of Finale
Author : sbuttgereit
Score : 129 points
Date : 2024-08-26 23:34 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.finalemusic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.finalemusic.com)
| genter wrote:
| > It will not be possible to authorize Finale on any new devices,
| or reauthorize Finale
|
| Well that seems like a dick move.
|
| > MakeMusic has partnered with Steinberg to offer an exclusive
| discount on Dorico Pro.
|
| So can we assume MakeMusic is getting a kickback for every sale
| of Dorico? If that's the case, of course they're going to stop
| you from reinstalling Finale.
| dahart wrote:
| Sheesh, kinda harsh. The reauthorize deadline isn't until a
| year from now. And I wouldn't assume anything, but I _hope_
| they're making a kickback from sales of Dorico. Given the
| discount price, even if your assumption is true, it can't be
| that much money.
|
| This isn't some kind of massive win for MakeMusic, nor is it
| greed if they get a little money for moving people to another
| product. They're shutting down what once was their flagship
| product. There's more competition now, the codebase is heavy
| with legacy cruft, maybe it's no fun at all to work on, or
| maybe they're losing customers and are unable to make a living
| on Finale. It's hard and painful to shut down a once-successful
| project, especially for people who've worked hard on it for a
| long time. I can't help but empathize a little.
|
| It could be _way_ worse, they could be shutting down new
| authorizations today. Companies and products that die do that
| all the time. Giving the customers a year to deal with it and a
| steeply discounted upgrade path is relatively kind.
| wvenable wrote:
| > It could be way worse
|
| So they chopped off your finger, it could be worse they could
| have taken the whole hand!
|
| The right thing to do is release a version that doesn't
| require authorization at all.
| dahart wrote:
| The existing authorized versions will continue to work
| forever. What more do you want from a product that ceases
| to exist? It's going to EOL no matter what very quickly as
| OSes get incompatible upgrades. If you're still using
| Finale a year from now hoping that it's somehow going to
| continue, you're only tricking yourself.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I have productivity software that is 30 years old that I
| can still install and run today either on windows or
| wine. This is because it doesn't need to connect to the
| internet in order to install. Any software from the last
| decade or so is far less permanent.
| vunderba wrote:
| With all the negative replies to your post, it's rather
| unbelievable to me that you can't figure out why.
|
| Number 1: this is not a cloud-based product, it works
| entirely off-line, so saying that the product ceases to
| exist is also wrong, I and many others archive the
| installers to re-install them on new computers.
|
| Number 2: Microsoft prides itself on backwards
| compatibility, and it is very common to run software that
| is decades-old on new versions of windows.
|
| Number 3: _It will not be possible to authorize Finale on
| any new devices, or reauthorize Finale._ This is the
| point that is angering people. I paid for a very specific
| version of Finale, and it 's obvious that I should
| continue to expect to be able to use it barring OS
| related incompatibility. The only reason the software
| won't work anymore is because they're deliberately
| locking my authorization key.
|
| The correct move from the company is to either leave the
| server that authorizes keys on, or if that's somehow
| magically too much trouble, then they need to patch older
| versions of finale to not check for the key.
|
| Source: Have been using Finale for decades
| dahart wrote:
| This does suck. I truly, honestly feel bad for you and
| other Finale users.
|
| I might indeed be wrong (about what I'm not exactly sure
| yet despite your comment), but I think you maybe
| misunderstood my comment a little bit. I didn't say the
| software will cease to exist, but the product actually
| went on life support yesterday and will cease to exist in
| a year. You can't buy it, and support ends in 1 year.
| After that it no longer exists _as a product_. That's not
| my opinion, it's what the letter says.
|
| It's understandable to be upset about the new
| authorization cutoff. That might not be MakeMusic's
| decision, it might be Steinberg's. The move to Dorico and
| the discount on offer might be valuable and viable for a
| lot of people, but I have no doubt that it probably
| doesn't work for everyone, and in that case the
| authorization shut-off hurts more.
|
| But, new authorization isn't going to help much beyond a
| year anyway, right? With the product dying, if you
| haven't moved to something else by then, it's just
| playing Russian Roulette. I've watched _loads_ of Windows
| software become incompatible, software much younger than
| Finale, despite your point #2. I tried installing audio
| drivers for my Edirol audio interface just yesterday, and
| it no longer works. It sucks when software products you
| depend on go away, but unfortunately, people sometimes
| run out of money.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| > I've watched loads of Windows software become
| incompatible...
|
| I've been a Windows sysadmin since the late 90s. This has
| not ever been my experience with productivity software.
| Games and hardware drivers can be problematic, for sure,
| but productivity software by-and-large can be made to
| work fine on newer versions of Windows.
|
| > It sucks when software products you depend on go
| away...
|
| It's not "going away"-- it's being taken away. That's the
| issue people are having with it.
|
| Bits don't rot. Locally-installed software doesn't "wear
| out". (Yes, yes-- you need to employ different security
| paradigms and compensating controls with "out of date"
| software in light of vulnerabilities. That's still not
| the software "wearing out".)
|
| It's deeply saddening anyone would just accept
| perpetually-licensed use rights for locally-installed
| software being revoked after-the-fact. This should be the
| the purview of consumer protection regulation, not
| resignation that the world just works that way.
| wvenable wrote:
| > I've watched loads of Windows software become
| incompatible
|
| And I've seen a resurgence of old software running with
| very compatible PC emulators and older versions of
| Windows still installable. In theory, this software could
| run forever just like my copy of Oregon Trail.
| dahart wrote:
| Great! It's great that sometimes software continues to
| work. If only that was always the case.
| wvenable wrote:
| I bought Office 2013 over 10 years ago and I still
| install it on my desktop.
|
| It is available as a Windows app right? It takes a lot
| for Microsoft to make their OS be incompatible with apps.
| junon wrote:
| Some important context here is that Tantacrul has a history
| of buying up music or audio related software (some of which
| is Open Source, e.g. Audacity) and trying to take it in New
| Directions(tm) in ways nobody wants or asked for.
|
| For example, the entire Audacity Google Analytics debacle,
| and how he basically insulted the entire community when there
| was an outrage over GA being silently added.
|
| MuseScore I'm less familiar with but I do recall people being
| upset about how some of that went down, too.
| jraph wrote:
| That's quite the shortcut. Audacity and Musescore belong to
| the Muse, and the Muse hired Tantacrul. He didn't buy
| anything. Do we know that he made those decisions?
|
| Yes, questionable stuff was added to Musescore since he
| joined. I'm particularly not too happy about their push for
| their Musescore.com cloud in the UI, the proprietary
| (optional) audio rendering bit, and the proprietary "update
| manager" in the binaries they distribute. Is he the one who
| pushed those things though? (Maybe, I don't know. But I
| doubt it. Those things are mostly business decisions, he is
| a UX designer).
|
| Musescore also massively improved since he joined. It is a
| massively better software than before.
|
| But I don't see the connection with the current discussion?
| We are not talking about Musescore, the Muse or Tantacrul,
| are we? We are talking about Finale.
| dahart wrote:
| What does this have to do with Finale?
| junon wrote:
| Looks like a comment got edited somewhere.
| dahart wrote:
| Hmmm, I don't think so...
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Yes, God forbid someone tries to get some real usage
| statistics and actually improve the product. Much better to
| rely on random emails bikeshedding about some minutia
| junon wrote:
| Adding Google analytics to an open source project without
| consulting the millions of users and having it opt-in to
| start is a huge middle finger to everyone who uses it.
| wwweston wrote:
| > This isn't some kind of massive win for MakeMusic, nor is
| it greed if they get a little money for moving people to
| another product.
|
| Yeah, this doesn't smell like a typical financial or
| strategic move. My guess would be that this is a team that
| really cared about the product domain to recommend a
| competitor going forward but also came to recognize
| retirement needs among their codebase and/or the team itself.
| lozenge wrote:
| The customers paid for a lifetime license, why is a year
| reasonable to revoke this with no compensation?
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Maybe its the "companies Lifetime" license. You may use
| this as long as the company survives
| dahart wrote:
| The license to use existing installs is not being revoked,
| customers can continue to use Finale on their computer.
|
| How do you know they're not offering compensation to people
| who purchased recently? What compensation do you expect,
| and under what circumstances?
|
| (* edit to add link to the refund offer:
| https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/258438881308...)
|
| Like I said, I'm comparing the extra year to situations
| where products shut down immediately without an extra year.
| You would agree that having an extra year is better than
| not, wouldn't you?
| skywhopper wrote:
| Yes, people are pointing out that "it could be worse" is
| a cruddy thing to say. It's bad! It could always be
| worse, but there's no point in saying so. Continuing to
| harp on "it could be worse" is not helpful. It sounds
| like you are disagreeing that it's wrong and bad to
| disable future use of a product that is locally installed
| and not a subscription.
| dahart wrote:
| Thank you for acknowledging that my comment is being
| misinterpreted and that it could be worse. Of course it's
| bad, the product died. That sucks for people who like
| Finale, sucks for people who paid for it recently, _and
| it sucks for MakeMusic too_! That simply does not justify
| attacking or disparaging the developer, nor making
| assumptions about their motivation, nor making
| unreasonable demands about how they handle the
| transition.
|
| What do you actually want? Do you need to convert your
| Finale library? By nearly all accounts, Dorico's a
| massive UX upgrade and being offered at a 75% discount. I
| haven't used it, but I just don't understand why the
| pitchforks are out, especially when I'm not hearing many
| personal stories in this thread, so that makes it seem
| like bystander outrage where the bystanders aren't
| invested.
| wvenable wrote:
| There is nothing unreasonable about the demand that
| continue to make software that they sold installable by
| the owners. That's completely reasonable. It's actually
| far more unreaonable to sell someone a product and the
| next day make it unable to be reinstalled. That's
| unreasonable. I would even hope that would be illegal;
| it's too bad it's probably not.
| dahart wrote:
| > It's actually far more unreasonable to sell someone a
| product and the next day make it unable to be
| reinstalled. That's unreasonable.
|
| I agree. So does MakeMusic, I guess, which is why they
| have at least a 30 day refund, and a whole year before
| new install authorizations end. I feel like I'm being
| misunderstood and misquoted and you're arguing against
| things I didn't say. I agree that losing access to new
| installs of Finale after a year sucks. I understand why
| paid users are angry. I assume the no re-auth after a
| year part could be a non-compete stipulation in their
| agreement with Steinberg. If most current Finale users
| value the ~$450 Dorico discount, maybe it's worth the
| blowback, otherwise, maybe not.
| wvenable wrote:
| If you agree that losing access to new installs after a
| year sucks, and you understand why paid users are angry I
| don't know why you keep replying. This is an unnecessary
| user-hostile thing to do and, in my opinion, should be
| illegal. If you sell a product, you should not be able to
| post-sale revoke access to that product. This is even
| more cut-and-dried than products that rely on servers for
| actual functionality.
| dahart wrote:
| I'm replying because we're having a discussion, and
| because it has been clear all along that you didn't quite
| understand my position before arguing with it, so I'm
| trying to better explain it. I do agree that losing
| access sucks, and I do see why some paid users are angry,
| so maybe you don't actually disagree with me after all.
| Maybe it should be illegal to turn off new installs after
| a year, I could agree with that in some circumstances,
| but you continue to exaggerate and oversimplify the
| actual situation which doesn't help, and this feels
| purely dogmatic now and not particularly real-world.
| Leaving the auth server on is unlikely to benefit very
| many people. In both directions, it seems more symbolic
| than functional. If they turn it off, hardly anyone will
| be affected but maybe it appeases Steinberg, and if they
| leave it on, hardly anyone will be affected but maybe it
| appeases internet mobs.
| wvenable wrote:
| They should just remove the need for the auth server
| entirely. Whether or not it benefits very many people is
| beside the point; it's the principle. Allowing their
| users to continue to use the product that they have fully
| paid for is morally (and potentially legally) the right
| thing to do.
| dahart wrote:
| Yes I see your point is a principle you have and that you
| aren't interested in discussing any nuance or details. I
| have heard and acknowledged your opinion multiple times
| that they should not disable the auth server. I
| understand that and I'm not disagreeing with it, so
| there's no need to keep repeating it over and over unless
| you have new evidence, reasons, points to discuss.
|
| For MakeMusic, I don't know, but whether it benefits the
| most Finale users may be the entire point from their
| perspective. And it might matter to the users too, even
| if it doesn't matter to you. The dev's principles might
| prioritize maximum benefit for the most users over the
| anger that shutting off the auth server could potentially
| lead to. They are offering a _tradeoff_ for which there
| is no perfect solution for everyone. Leaving the auth
| server on but not offering a Dorico discount might be
| overall significantly less good than what they did, even
| if what the did isn't perfect or agreeable by your
| standards. That possibility is interesting and worth
| considering to me, even if not to you.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| They just announced that they're stealing back the product
| they sold to their erstwhile customers. "It could be way
| worse" is a hell of a response to that.
|
| "We just stopped support for your Silverado. You can drive it
| for one more year, then we're coming to take it out of your
| garage. We have a deal with Ford for you to get an F-150 with
| a discount."
|
| "It could be way worse, at least I get to use it for another
| year, I hope they're getting a kickback from Ford."
| dahart wrote:
| What's with the outrage? Do you own a Finale license? I'm
| sorry if you do, this does suck for people who still want
| to use Finale, but "stealing back" seems like hyperbole.
| The product (along with their income stream related to it)
| is shutting down permanently. It died, and no amount of
| commentary is going to bring it back.
|
| Assuming you have a vested interest in the outcome here,
| what do you actually want to have happen to Finale that's
| realistic for MakeMusic? What would you have done if it was
| your business? Have you ever had a business and had to plan
| the shut down a product people had paid for? Please
| actually consider those questions carefully.
|
| Sometimes businesses lose. You can't force a business to
| make a profit or to sell something they don't want to sell
| or can no longer make. There's no good way to shut down a
| product. And there's no product ever that has ceased that
| didn't have buyers right before they stopped taking money.
|
| It's a fact that it could be worse, and I already explained
| why, because often it actually is worse, especially with
| tech companies.
|
| And yes, I hope the devs at MakeMusic are okay. I don't
| understand why internet commenters wouldn't, _especially_
| if they're Finale fans.
| jcranmer wrote:
| If you do a quick read of the announcement, it sounds at
| first like "after next year, it's impossible to use
| Finale anymore" (a closer read indicates that what goes
| away is the ability to activate a Finale install, so
| existing copies will keep working until you get a new
| computer). And for a lot of people, those who are reading
| the announcement that way, this is going to be a "my
| library of scores becomes permanently and completely
| inaccessible" situation. Especially because, to my
| knowledge, no one has a working Finale music file ->
| their own music file converter (people have working
| converters from MusicXML, but you have to open up Finale
| to convert from its format to MusicXML, and Finale only
| added MusicXML support relatively recently).
|
| It's this library archival stranding that is driving a
| lot of outrage from some quarters, especially if you're
| misreading the announcement, as noted above.
| dahart wrote:
| That's a great point, and I'm happy to overlook any
| initial misunderstandings. I would be very concerned as
| well if I had a Finale library, even knowing MusicXML
| might be available. I don't have a Finale library, but I
| know at least one composer who does and is probably
| freaking out right now. I'm going to call him today.
| skywhopper wrote:
| They're making it impossible to continue to use a product
| their customers already paid for. How is that not
| stealing?
| dahart wrote:
| Are you a Finale user?
|
| I guess you can call it stealing if you want. The word
| steal has many figurative meanings, such as 'you stole my
| heart'. When a product fails, yes it eventually becomes
| impossible to use, even when you paid for it. To me it
| seems like misleading and hyperbole to call it stealing
| because you're implicitly assigning malice to the
| business that simply failed, because they failed and
| aren't getting value from the software becoming EOL,
| because they're offering refunds to people who paid
| recently and haven't had time to get value.
|
| Do you call all products and business that fail or go out
| of business "stealing"?
|
| If you read the letter and FAQ in their entirety, you
| will see they are not making it impossible to continue to
| use Finale. Customers who paid can continue to use it,
| for as long as their computer works. They are turning off
| _new_ activations on _new_ machines, in a year from now.
| It's hard to imagine that mattering very much in the face
| of the facts that Finale is now dead, cannot be
| purchased, and is going to be obsolete eventually due to
| incompatible OS changes no matter what. But if you depend
| on Finale enough to not upgrade your computer, you can
| continue to use Finale as long as you want.
| domador wrote:
| It's stealing.
|
| It's one thing if I buy a tool and it breaks down
| naturally. That does happen... in the physical world. It
| should NEVER happen in the software world, not for a
| standalone tool. If a company that sold you the tool
| (which you expected to use indefinitely) then goes out of
| their way to make sure you can't keep using that tool,
| then yeah, that's stealing.
|
| Actually, it's not stealing. It's sabotage.
|
| (And yes, they are making it nearly impossible to keep
| using finale. Unlike software, computers do break down.
| Or sometimes Microsoft forces everyone to get a new
| computer, as it seems will happen next year with the
| forced obsolescence of Windows 10 and forced move to
| Windows 11.)
| dahart wrote:
| I hope people treat you with respect and understanding
| and don't attack you for stealing if you ever need to
| discontinue any of your software products or happen to go
| out of business. I have had my own software business, and
| had to plan the sunset of a paid product, and it would
| have been hurtful if people accused me of stealing when I
| was already hurting due to being out of money and feeling
| like a failure. Thankfully, none of my customers did that
| to me, as far as I know.
|
| As you point out, it's Microsoft or Apple forcing you to
| upgrade. Why are you blaming MakeMusic for that? If you
| don't upgrade, then your currently running copy of Finale
| will continue working. It's completely unrealistic for
| most people to not upgrade, but still, it's not
| MakeMusic's fault that people upgrade.
| wvenable wrote:
| Upgrade? What my CPU melts and I need a new computer.
| This has _nothing_ to do with Microsoft of Apple. All
| they have to do is allow their product to continue to be
| installed -- it 's easy. Nobody expects anything else
| from them. If, for whatever reason, it no longer installs
| on Windows 17 -- so be it. As long as it was not
| explicitly sabotaged by it's creator to not run.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > I hope people treat you with respect and understanding
| and don't attack you for stealing if you ever need to
| discontinue any of your software products or happen to go
| out of business.
|
| No-one is attacking MakeMusic for discontinuing their
| product, yet you continue to assert this.
|
| People are attacking MakeMusic for removing a way that
| you can continue to use their product _as long as there
| are no technical limitations preventing you_. No-one is
| saying "Oh, it needs to support Windows 14 and macOS
| 18". They are saying "there is nothing wrong with the
| software I purchased, nor the hardware I wish to run it
| on. You are just arbitrarily preventing me from doing
| so".
|
| They don't have to keep activation servers running.
| Create a patch that disables the online activation
| requirement. Done.
| wvenable wrote:
| > Do you call all products and business that fail or go
| out of business "stealing"?
|
| I have plenty of products from companies that go out of
| business. Some of them even have servers that they depend
| on. At least one of the companies did the right thing and
| allowed their physical hardware product to continue to be
| used by people running their own servers.
|
| It's not rocket science. It's should be the right and
| moral thing to do. Are they legally required to do it?
| No. Should they be? Probably yes.
| gspencley wrote:
| I don't have a proverbial dog in this race but I agree
| with the outrage and I don't think "stealing back" is at
| all hyperbolic.
|
| I guess if you're really really really young and all you
| know is subscription based software, then that is the
| world you know and you might just be accustomed to it and
| accept it.
|
| But if Finale has been around for 35 years, then it
| existed long before "cloud" and long before subscription
| software was a thing.
|
| If someone has invested money and time into using that
| software, into creating project files that only work with
| it, in learning how to use that then it is not remotely
| acceptable in my opinion to disable their access to
| something that they have paid for and invested in. I
| don't think that "stealing" is an inappropriate word to
| use in that case. Not even a little bit of hyperbole.
|
| Does that mean that MakeMusic should continue to invest
| their own resources into maintaining it? Absolutely not.
| To answer your question: "what do you actually want to
| have happen to Finale that's realistic for MakeMusic?": I
| would suggest that they allow people who have paid for it
| to continue to use it indefinitely.
|
| This might mean that they need to release a patched
| version that's not going to activate remotely through
| their servers with a download link that will eventually
| expire.
|
| I acknowledge that that doesn't cost them "absolutely
| nothing" but it's not a major expense (also happens to be
| a fixed cost) and it prevents them from being akin to
| your fridge manufacturer saying "we are discontinuing
| this model, as well as repair services for this model,
| therefore we are going to enter your house and physically
| remove your fridge one year from now so that you will be
| forever unable to use the thing that you paid us money
| for." What they get in return for this one time "end of
| life" service for their paying customers is customer
| retention and good will. I mean, I know that I will never
| consider buying anything from MakeMusic as a result of
| hearing that they might shut off my access to things I
| bought and paid for at any time.
| dahart wrote:
| Users who've paid for it _can_ continue to use it
| indefinitely, albeit with no support after 1 year from
| now. The fridge analogy is wrong. MakeMusic is not going
| to remove the software from your computer.
|
| > it's not a major expense (also happens to be a fixed
| cost)
|
| That's unlikely to be true, and not anyone's decision but
| MakeMusic's. What if they don't have the money? It's not
| reasonable for me to ask you to pay me $10 on the grounds
| that it's not a major expense and is a fixed cost, right?
| vunderba wrote:
| _Users who've paid for it can continue to use it
| indefinitely, albeit with no support after 1 year from
| now_
|
| FALSE.
|
| From the announcement, "It will not be possible to
| authorize Finale on any new devices, or reauthorize
| Finale".
|
| If I have to reinstall it for any reason, such as my
| computer dying, or I get a virus, or I upgrade my
| computer, or any myriad of reasons, I am completely SOL
| and can no longer "continue to use it indefinitely".
| dahart wrote:
| I was referring to this:
|
| https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/258438881308...
|
| "Will my software continue to function?
|
| Yes! Your existing authorized Finale installations will
| continue to work as long as your current computer is
| working."
|
| BTW, I did make the mistake of saying 'forever' in
| another comment, but FWIW 'indefinitely' doesn't mean
| forever. Also, it doesn't matter what I say, I don't work
| for MakeMusic, just read the whole FAQ.
| gspencley wrote:
| > but FWIW 'indefinitely' doesn't mean forever
|
| You just really like arguing for the sake of arguing
| don't you?
|
| I'm sure that if I opened a dictionary I would find the
| distinction, but most people treat the words
| 'indefinitely' and 'forever' as synonymous. Nit-picking
| on that minutia kind of makes you come across like the
| obnoxious little brother who does the "But I'm not
| touching you!" thing to his sister. It's just annoying
| and most reasonable people know exactly how
| 'indefinitely' and 'forever' will be interpreted.
| wvenable wrote:
| "...will continue to work as long as your current
| computer is working."
|
| This doesn't seem _dumb_ to you?
| dahart wrote:
| Yeah sure, in a way. It's kinda dumb in the sense that
| 'as long as your computer is working' actually means
| 'ending soon', for the majority of people in the real
| world. That seems obvious though. Few people if anyone
| can keep their current computer working with a software
| app that freezes. It might stop working in a year, it
| might be more than that, or might be less than that
| (which they explicitly admit re: Sequoia).
|
| It's a sort of glass-half-full spin, perhaps, but doesn't
| seem misleading to me in light of all the FAQ entries and
| the letter. They are very clearly and explicitly
| recommending users move off of Finale asap, and not wait
| for the computer to stop working, whatever that might
| mean. If someone really truly depends on Finale
| professionally, and can't move within a year, it's not
| outside the bounds of possibility to freeze their
| computer, buy a new one for everything else, and keep
| Finale running for a while. I would in no way recommend
| that, but I've seen people do it before.
| wvenable wrote:
| It's not their job to revoke access to a product that I
| paid for regardless of the reason.
|
| If they sold me that product I should be able to pop that
| software into a Windows 10 VM and use it till the end of
| time.
| dahart wrote:
| I guess that depends on what they want, and what their
| agreement with Steinberg is, and maybe the EULA, and
| maybe how much money and time they have to maintain an
| auth server machine.
|
| What you're actually complaining about is the fact that
| the software was remotely authorized in the first place,
| starting over 3 decades ago, not that it was discontinued
| and will stop. It's fine and fair to be against the idea
| of releasing software that requires remote authorization,
| I'm not arguing against that idea. But if you are, then
| don't buy it in the first place. Software that is
| remotely authorized _always_ comes with the risk that
| authorization will go away, it would be pretty silly to
| assume otherwise.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| > Software that is remotely authorized always comes with
| the risk that authorization will go away, it would be
| pretty silly to assume otherwise.
|
| Consumers don't know this. This is why we need consumer
| protection regulation to control these practices.
| dahart wrote:
| Nobody who bought is unaware that it's remotely
| authorized. And, there's a 30 day refund policy, so if
| they find out after purchase, they can change their mind.
|
| You might have a point when it comes to, say, MS Windows,
| but not Finale.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| > Nobody who bought is unaware that it's remotely
| authorized.
|
| You're radically overestimating the understanding of
| consumers. The target market for a product like Finale is
| decidedly not "IT people".
| dahart wrote:
| Maybe, but the problems with your _new_ argument are 1)
| Finale requires explicit authorization, it's a manual
| process the user has to do when first launching so you
| seem to be speculating or making things up, 2) this moved
| the goal posts for the thread and you're undermining
| @wvenable's argument and others by suggesting they didn't
| understand what they were doing 3) it doesn't matter what
| your or I think about consumers, what matters is what the
| EULA and /or sales contract said.
|
| And why did you quote "IT people", who said anything
| about IT people?
| gspencley wrote:
| > And why did you quote "IT people", who said anything
| about IT people?
|
| I'm not the person you're replying to but I interpreted
| what they were saying as meaning "tech savvy."
|
| The average, non-tech-savvy user doesn't necessarily
| understand the concept of client/server applications let
| alone realize that what makes the software that they
| purchased work is bound to a remote server / someone
| else's computer that could one day disappear.
|
| I've been following this thread and in another reply it
| was pointed out that Finale has a 30 day money back
| guarantee, that "everyone" who uses Finale knows about
| the remote activation mechanism and that if they discover
| it after purchase and do not agree they can take
| advantage of that 30 day money back guarantee.
|
| I think this argument is weak.
|
| What a user typically experiences after installing new
| software is a dialogue asking them to enter their email
| and password that was used at the time of purchasing.
|
| What happens after that is not necessarily clear.
|
| Does it need to send the email and password to a remote
| server in order to verify the license every single time
| the application starts, or is this a one time activation?
|
| From the user's perspective, is it made blatantly clear
| that the software is asking for the information for the
| purpose of product activation or is it merely for
| personalization purposes?
|
| For that matter, does it actually serve any functional
| purpose at all, or is it just annoying data collection
| that can't be skipped?
|
| 20 years ago, EULAs were one of the big talking points
| online when it came to software companies. There was a
| question as to whether EULAs would actually be
| enforceable, binding contracts that courts would
| recognize at all. This came up time and time again
| because of some of the content that these EULAs included.
| I can't remember any specifics, but I remember that there
| was some really eyebrow raising stuff in some EULAs.
| Regardless, it was well understood that most end users
| blindly clicked "I Agree" without ever reading the EULA.
| It was seen by most as an annoying thing that you had to
| do when installing software, and few understood the point
| or gave it a second thought.
|
| My argument is that when it comes to product activation,
| most end users probably view it as similar to clicking "I
| Agree" on the EULA. I doubt very much that most non-tech-
| savvy users are really thinking about the fact that
| someone else's computer is going to need to be running in
| order to activate their software should they need to re-
| install or if they lose access to the Internet. And very
| few are thinking about the possibility that the company
| could go out of business or one day just decide to stop
| activating the software on re-installs because they feel
| like it.
|
| I'm repeating some of what I've said in earlier replies
| of mine ... but this really comes down to contracts and
| by "contract" I don't necessarily mean a hand-written and
| signed document laying out terms, I just mean the
| agreement that was between the vendor and purchaser. That
| agreement can be complicated because you've got the EULA
| on the one hand, the company's marketing on the other and
| what a court would recognize and enforce if it were
| litigated.
|
| I'm personally more concerned with the implied agreement
| because I doubt anyone will choose to litigate over this
| (unless there is an institution somewhere that invested a
| lot of money in Finale and expected to be able to use the
| software in perpetuity). The implied agreement matters
| because this speaks to what promises MusicMaker was
| making to their customers and if they reneg on that
| promise, when money is at stake, it makes them a shit
| company that no one should ever do business with in the
| future.
|
| I also really don't understand why you're "simping" so
| hard for MusicMaker. Is it that you've taken a position
| and you're debating it as an academic exercise or out of
| boredom? Or are they paying you? I mean ... I've never
| seen anyone go to bat so hard in favour of a company
| screwing over their paying customers.
| wvenable wrote:
| Why should their agreement with Steinberg factor into
| this?
|
| There is no need to maintain the auth server just make
| the one-time cost of removing the requirement of the auth
| server.
|
| As for this particular EULA, if the publisher stops
| selling the software, they shouldn't be able to revoke
| existing licenses based on it. The license was granted in
| exchange for a fee, creating an expectation that the
| software could be used indefinitely under the agreed
| terms. Their EULA specifies that revocation is linked to
| breaches by the licensee, not the publisher's business
| decisions.
|
| Their EULA lacks any clause that allows revocation simply
| because the software is no longer sold. Revoking a
| license under these circumstances would remove their
| right to use a product they legally purchased, which is a
| violation of their consumer rights. The publisher's
| decision to withdraw the software from the market
| shouldn't negate the licensee's ability to continue using
| it as originally intended.
|
| Software being remotely authorized is an implementation
| detail not a contractual one. It literally doesn't
| matter. It's their job to allow software legally
| purchased to continue to function however they are able
| to do it.
| dahart wrote:
| > Why should their agreement with Steinberg factor into
| this?
|
| I'm speculating, but it _could_ be possible that turning
| off authorization is Steingberg's request or stipulation
| for offering a Dorico discount. Was that not clear before
| this point? If true, does it change your calculus at all?
|
| > Software being remotely authorized is an implementation
| detail not a contractual one.
|
| Section 9 "Authorization" of the June 2021 EULA disproves
| that claim.
|
| https://wpmedia.makemusic.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/06/Fin...
|
| > It's their job to allow software legally purchased to
| continue to function however they are able to do it.
|
| Says who? Do you have any laws or contracts you can cite
| to back that up? I know you're just trying to convince me
| that they shouldn't be able to turn off remote
| authorization of new installs next year, however turning
| off authorization is a thing that can happen with any
| software packages that use remote authorization, because
| remote authorization is a common practice. Again, I'm not
| debating the ethics of said practice. But if you think
| that remote auth should be illegal, then you should never
| have bought Finale in the first place.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > I guess that depends on what they want, and what their
| agreement with Steinberg is, and maybe the EULA, and
| maybe how much money and time they have to maintain an
| auth server machine.
|
| Their agreement with Steinberg doesn't absolve them of
| their rights to me.
| dahart wrote:
| > Their agreement with Steinberg doesn't absolve them of
| their rights to me.
|
| I assume you mean responsibilities? What are those,
| _exactly_?
| gspencley wrote:
| > That's unlikely to be true, and not anyone's decision
| but MakeMusic's
|
| The nuance here is that it depends on the contract
| between MakeMusic and their customers. If I'm purchasing
| a subscription and the fine print makes it clear that
| service may be discontinued at any point for any reason,
| fair enough. If I make a one-time purchase and expect
| that I will be able to use what I paid for indefinitely,
| then them taking down their activation servers without
| providing a workaround might be a violation of their
| contract with their customers.
|
| But I'm not making a completely ill-informed proposition
| when I suggest that the expense would be minimal and
| fixed for MakeMusic to do what I suggested. Obviously I
| don't know all of the details about how their software
| works, so I can't know for sure. I'm making certain
| assumptions based on how long their software has been
| around, the fact that they have a remote activation
| mechanism and having developed software professionally
| myself for over 25 years.
| resonious wrote:
| Seems quite ridiculous to not just release a free version with
| no support, no updates, no DRM. It's like they're going out of
| their way to destroy their legacy. I'd hate to be one of the
| devs.
| miclill wrote:
| This is just a guess, but maybe the struck a deal with
| Steinberg that does not allow them to do this?
| zarzavat wrote:
| It's a hell of a way to treat your customers who may have
| spent thousands of dollars on your software over the
| decades.
|
| Exactly what I'd expect from MakeMusic though, they have
| always been shysters.
| altruios wrote:
| the mouth eats the hands.
|
| The egregoric lifecycle of a company. People that want to
| make money take over a successful business and run it
| into the ground not realizing their budget cuts are what
| killed the company (because, like locus, they've already
| moved on to the next feast).
| pmarreck wrote:
| If they don't, the darknet (read as: "unpaid chaotic-good
| data preservation enthusiasts") will.
| prvc wrote:
| They should, at minimum, release a freeware file conversion
| tool.
| dahart wrote:
| It seems like the FAQ addresses this, no? Customers can use
| MusicXML, which is an open format. https://www.musicxml.com/
| prvc wrote:
| The tool would need to output MusicXML. And maybe PDF as a
| fallback, if they can manage that. Each version of Finale
| uses its own complex, proprietary, and opaque file format.
| With no way to activate new installations of the software,
| the content of these files will become harder to access as
| time progresses. They should do more to allow the software
| to continue to be activated, as well.
| dahart wrote:
| > The tool would need to output MusicXML.
|
| Finale does export MusicXML already. And PDF.
|
| https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/258438881308...
|
| > They should do more to allow the software to continue
| to be activated, as well.
|
| Why? BTW, it can continue to be activated for a year, and
| existing activations will continue to work after that, as
| long as the OS remains compatible. What else do you think
| they should do after development has stopped?
|
| https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/258438881308...
| prvc wrote:
| And after that period, in one year and one day, any new
| installation of Finale will be impossible to activate
| without a keygen (and I am not aware of any having been
| released, so far, that work with the "final" version).
| This will make it impossible to recover the contents of
| .mus and .musx files by users who do not already have a
| previous working installation of Finale.
| dahart wrote:
| Yes, that's correct. The time is now to convert your
| Finale files, not a year from now. You could easily get
| stuck before a year is up due to OS upgrades. And you
| will get stuck eventually for the exact same reason, OS
| incompatibilities are coming, guaranteed. Finale is
| officially dead. Right now while it's still working is
| when people should archive the contents of their files.
|
| Circling back to your top comment, my point is that the
| tools to do this already exist. No new tools or freeware
| is needed, the exporters are already there.
| prvc wrote:
| It is unreasonable for the software vendor to impose the
| task of converting a large mass of files (one by one!) on
| the users, especially within such a limited time frame.
| Most users have hundreds, thousands, or more such files
| to go through. As things stand, a very large amount of
| music is certain to become lost. A freeware convertor
| would obviate this particular concern. Very easy to
| implement, too; just don't disable the export and print
| functionality anymore in the main application after the
| "evaluation period" expires.
| dahart wrote:
| Are you sure Finale has no batch export? There are free &
| paid tools available on both Mac & Windows to help
| automate menu actions and batch convert things.
|
| The product is dead, and like any product or business
| that dies, yes users may have a problem with their
| archive. It does suck, and I feel for anyone in this
| situation. I guess the lesson is that this is _always_
| the risk with all software, it might lose support. It
| happens, often.
|
| I don't see any reasonable alternatives. It doesn't seem
| reasonable to demand that someone ending support for a
| product must turn around and write a new product to
| continue supporting the dead product. If they're out of
| money, they're out of money, and they can't afford to
| retain developers to work on it.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Windows 11 has compatibility with 30 year old software.
| And will be able to be emulated far into the future.
|
| If you are ending a product that users were using to make
| creative works, then preventing that product from working
| into the future is robbing the future of the ability to
| look back at these files.
|
| Imagine a case where 5 years from now you find your
| backups with files from Finale. You won't be able to read
| them unless you have an active activated installation.
| Even if you had the installer backed up so you could re-
| install, it won't work.
|
| The right thing to do, would be to enable the users to
| keep running this software, if they have the means + the
| rights, not _activly_ prevent it from working.
| _Especially_ if the only thing between a user and using
| their licensed software, is a license check.
|
| Honestly, it's probably moot anyway: the pirate scene
| will almost certanly have the activation check patched
| out in no time.
| ta2112 wrote:
| Yes! There must be millions of Finale files out there that
| will otherwise become unreadable.
| Kye wrote:
| I wouldn't trust Steinberg, either.
|
| I had a copy of one of the lesser Cubases from an audio thing I
| owned. I had it registered and on my account...and then I
| didn't. And, of course, the contact form only offers options
| that begin with selecting the software you own in your account,
| so I was left with useless pre-sale contact options. I had a
| notion to upgrade to one of the higher Cubase versions and
| maybe get WaveLab using the lesser version that also came with
| the hardware, but that permanently soured me on the company.
| TheCleric wrote:
| Just open source it. You could spin this as a positive instead.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I assume that if Finale were open-sourced, the code would be so
| ugly that nobody who worked on it would ever be employable
| again. Finale also has some tight integration with its Midi
| player and audio output that may have some weird patented shit
| or Apple/MS proprietary jank.
| hyperrail wrote:
| Indeed, I have heard that at least early versions of Finale
| had painfully unmaintainable code that severely slowed its
| development.
|
| This supposedly was/is in part because Finale's original
| author Phil Farrand [1] was a musician turned self-taught
| programmer and Finale was only his second software product.
|
| [1] https://philfarrand.com/biography/
| tjr wrote:
| I used Finale for years before switching to Sibelius about 13
| years ago. I found Sibelius much easier to use, but I'm surprised
| that there aren't enough unmovable legacy Finale users to warrant
| continual maintenance of the product.
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| I'm in that camp. I've been using Finale since version 1. I
| tried Sibelius around the time you changed and it didn't quite
| but right with my use cases. I have to imagine that there are
| many like me that have years of muscle memory with the features
| (not to mention years of scores in the file format) who use it
| for to avoid having to worry about me software when they'd
| rather be focused on their music.
|
| Of course... that's a business focused on casually milking an
| annuity... Not something that's growing. I guess not with it
| for the people that bought the company a few years ago.
|
| Finally... Wonder what's happening with those Garritan sound
| libraries I've invested in....
| tjr wrote:
| Exactly, years of muscle memory and files. If I was
| involuntarily forced off of Sibelius at this point, I would
| be rather annoyed. I'm not even sure what I would do. Last
| time I tried it, Dorico did not support everything I needed
| to do, even if I wanted to use it.
| umvi wrote:
| Good thing I went with MuseScore
| empressplay wrote:
| My local music college uses Finale for their notation course, and
| I just spent $100US on it --- oh well :)
| bcatanzaro wrote:
| I may be the only person who loves LilyPond but I really do love
| it. The LaTeX of music notation.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| LilyPond is great, but the writing process for a lot of music
| involves a lot of playback, so integration with a half-decent
| playback engine is really useful. On top of that, you can do
| almost everything in Dorico and Sibelius with keyboard
| shortcuts, so they are very power-user-friendly (which is what
| I like about LaTeX).
| TylerE wrote:
| Plus, as professional software used by people along (mostly
| not very much) money with it, productivity is key. Lilypond
| loses _badly_ here.
|
| I can enter 200 or 300 bars in Dorico in the time I could do
| 20 in Lilypond - and that's at the rate I could manage when I
| was using lilypond regularly.
|
| I also think the output is nicer, which also matters here.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Lilypond is for music typesetting (they call it "engraving").
|
| Finale, Sibelius, Dorico, MuseScore are primarily for composing
| (though they have each made their own strides on the engraving
| front too).
| prewett wrote:
| Lilypond makes gorgeous music. However, getting things
| _besides_ music to look good is painful at best and sometimes
| impossible. I spent hours trying to figure out how to get a
| good looking lead sheet setup (music, chord name, lyrics).
| Especially font sizes and spacing. Ugh. Good luck getting an
| annotation (such as "intro" or "chorus") anywhere less than
| about 2em from the top of the staff...
|
| I think they've changed things in the five years since then, so
| I think I'd have to do it all over again.
| cpr wrote:
| Wow, memory lane! Used it (only amateurishly) about 30 years
| ago...
| jamesfinlayson wrote:
| Me too (though it was 20 years ago). I think Sibelius and a few
| others were alternatives installed on the machines but I didn't
| use any of them in depth.
| jcranmer wrote:
| So... does this mean that Tantacrul is never going to get around
| to making a video on Finale like he did with MuseScore, Sibelius,
| and Dorico?
|
| Edit: Apparently, he already said that it's lighting a fire under
| him to get it done:
| https://nitter.poast.org/Tantacrul/status/182807170687273381...
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I switched from Finale to Dorico about a year ago. It was like
| night and day in terms of user-friendliness. Finale felt heavily
| loaded down with legacy garbage. On Windows, it (really the Aria
| player) insisted on complete ownership of my audio output, too,
| which was a real pain.
| computerdork wrote:
| Did the same thing about the same time - consulted with a
| composition professor, and he said that he didn't know anyone
| that was using Finale, so realized it was time to switch after
| using for 2 decades.
|
| Agreed about the user-friendliness. Dorico is one of the most
| well thought-out, beautiful pieces of software I've seen.
| Really like the idea of modes - it's a bit complex at first,
| but think more software should do this. It's a really good way
| to separate features into different areas, to prevent the
| shotgun approach that most pieces of large software use, of
| just splattering features everywhere.
|
| Still, end of an era.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Yeah, I had been a finale user for >10 years, and it was a
| slow deterioration on MakeMusic's part, but I got frog boiled
| by it.
| computerdork wrote:
| frog-boiled, haha, good way to put it:)
| bjoli wrote:
| Nice to read this. I was taught finale when I was in school
| in the early 00s. I went on to study music (as a performer)
| and my notational needs were covered by writing by hand or by
| lilypond).
|
| I never though anything would actually threaten Sibelius or
| Finale, so reading about a new (and good) product has flbeen
| great.
|
| Maybe it introduces new ways composers can make strange
| errors when writing music :)
| dahart wrote:
| > Finale felt heavily loaded down with legacy garbage
|
| It seems like the letter fully confirms & validates your
| feeling. ;) There's just no GUI software started 35 years ago
| that's still alive and feels modern and unbloated. Okay, there
| might be something, but I want to see the examples that prove
| me wrong. Things that come to mind are like Photoshop or Word,
| both bloated with legacy and might be dying to web apps. Or
| Windows itself, also loaded down with legacy. UX standards and
| expectations have (thankfully) gone way up over time, and it's
| practically impossible to keep up without starting over with
| fresh applications, especially for boutique shops.
| Clamchop wrote:
| I don't really like "bloated" as a descriptor, because it's
| so unspecific that it's hard to argue against. Does it mean
| the software is slow? Too cluttered and disorganized? Too
| feature-heavy? Compromised by backward compatibility?
|
| In any case, Photoshop, Word, and Windows are not in Finale's
| position clearly, as they're still far and away leading their
| respective markets. So, whatever bloat they may have, it's
| not yet been fatal.
|
| Other old software that's been kept current includes Maya,
| Blender, Firefox (Netscape), MacOS (NeXTSTEP). I'm sure there
| are many other examples.
| dahart wrote:
| That's fair, 'bloated' is very vague. And TBH I have
| multiple stories of devs complaining about bloat in order
| to justify a complete rewrite that turned out to be multi-
| million-dollar mistakes.
|
| OTOH, I've been developing software long enough that you
| see the same pattern over and over. All application
| software is fresh and fast at first, and then gets bloated
| over time, where bloated means it accrues technical debt
| and accrues hard-to-manage code and accrues features that
| conflict with each other and slow down development.
|
| Maya's definitely bloated, and it has been for decades.
| Users were complaining about it being slow and buggy and a
| mess of a UI when I was using Maya in production more than
| 20 years ago. I went to the Maya developer's conference
| around maybe 2002 and the devs were complaining about it
| being hard to maintain.
|
| MacOS got a total ground-up rewrite in between versions 9
| and 10, and it helps they built the UI on top of an
| existing nix. I hope Firefox and Blender last as long as
| Finale, only time will tell.
|
| But it's a good point that some bloated software hasn't
| died, I have to assume that is because they're making
| enough money from it to continue its development. I guess
| that would be true for Finale too, but that the income
| isn't sufficient to carry it forward.
| pfranz wrote:
| > MacOS got a total ground-up rewrite in between versions
| 9 and 10, and it helps they built the UI on top of an
| existing nix.
|
| The reason the parent mentioned NeXTSTEP is while MacOS
| between 9 and X is a ground-up rewrite if you compare
| those two, Mac OS X was an evolution of the NeXTSTEP
| codebase from 1989 (34 years ago).
|
| > I went to the Maya developer's conference around maybe
| 2002 and the devs were complaining about it being hard to
| maintain.
|
| I'm not surprised. I'm a bit fuzzy on the pre-history of
| Maya, but I believe it incorporated software acquired
| from Alias, Wavefront, and TDI. However, I think part of
| the performance and bugginess might be from launching on
| expensive IRIX-based systems and transitioning to
| commodity hardware an Linux in the early 2000s.
| pfranz wrote:
| I think part of the reason apps like Photoshop and Word got
| bloated is that their audience got watered down and are
| fairly mainstream software.
|
| I'm sure there's a lot of old niche software that feels
| modern and unbloated. Nuke[1] is 31 years old and Houdini[2]
| is 27. Maya[3] is 26 years old. I would say Maya feels
| bloated--but at larger places I've worked, people have
| avoided the newer viewports with more features because the
| "legacy" viewports are so fast.
|
| It may be hard to make it feel "modern," but I love how
| optimized "old" code can be if they've been able to resist
| rewriting it.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuke_(software)
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houdini_(software)
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk_Maya
| danbmil99 wrote:
| rosegarden ftw
| minebreaker wrote:
| For me there are so many basic features that are missing in the
| competitors.
|
| I tried Dorico but it can't even play trills properly.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| If you're notating classical music and want to be able to
| listen to half decent playback, I would suggest buying
| NotePerformer and working with MuseScore before buying one of
| the "fancy" notation packages. Dorico's default playback is
| worse than Finale's Aria player.
| ssttoo wrote:
| Agreed that NotePerformer is night and day difference, highly
| recommended. I don't think it works with MuseScore though
| tomphoolery wrote:
| Finale was my first notation program, and while I switched to
| Sibelius out of necessity during college, I never really liked
| it. Will definitely check out Dorico, heard good things!
| eschaton wrote:
| Time for them to release the source code then.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Releasing source code (especially under a permissive license)
| would be extremely hard, even more so with software that old.
| There could be small 3rd party modules buried in the code base
| whose original developer is impossible to find, or could have
| passed years ago and they have no ways to contact anyone who
| owns the rights, let alone have everyone of them agree on open
| sourcing and under which license. There would be a fairly big
| chance of liability, and I couldn't blame them for not wanting
| to test that. Software should be open from the beginning.
| its-summertime wrote:
| They could just not release the code they don't have the
| rights to, and release the code they do have rights to
| dahart wrote:
| What would that achieve? Why would anyone want a pile of
| old code that can never build or run?
| Lammy wrote:
| Somebody would be able to replace the unreleased portions
| with new code.
| dahart wrote:
| It's a nice thought, just extremely unlikely, no?
| Unlikely that someone has the time to deal with a huge
| legacy system, and unlikely they'll be able to rewrite
| portions and get it working. There are very good reasons
| this hardly ever happens, releasing proprietary code,
| even when it's all modern and working. The potential
| downsides are usually bigger than the upsides.
| fweimer wrote:
| It has happened with OpenJDK, first downstream with the
| IcedTea distribution, and then gradually things were
| replaced upstream or opened by Oracle. I think today,
| only the browser plugin is missing, and nobody really
| wants that anymore.
|
| It's rare that this happens in the open like this. I
| expect that it was a factor that OpenJDK was a free
| software development tool, so Sun already had
| transferrable licenses from their suppliers. For other
| types of software, building new software with it is not a
| consideration from the outset, and licensing agreements
| with third-party component suppliers will reflect that.
| ralphc wrote:
| I have a copy of Allegro on a XP laptop, it's a case of it still
| doing everything I need it to do. I moved to macs around 2005,
| got a version of Allegro for it but basically every time I
| installed something new Allegro acted like it was a whole new
| machine and it was a pain to re-enable it, so I just stuck with
| the XP version.
|
| I understand wanting to get paid but the Finale family was so
| onerous in copy protection that it deserves its fate.
| lukeh wrote:
| Dorico is great. A bit of a learning curve but I don't miss
| Sibelius for an instant.
| geuis wrote:
| Wow. I'm surprised this app has been in development for so long.
|
| I used Finale in highschool in the mid to late 90s to write
| (admittedly terrible) music when I was in high school. Really
| amazing program at the time and the instrument voices were good
| for the time.
|
| I'm sure I have an old piece somewhere floating around on a
| floppy from that time in a box.
|
| Does anyone happen to know how far back the latest version
| supports their old file formats?
| macmac wrote:
| I am wondering if they cleared this with their lawyers? At a
| minimum it looks like a variant of a binding resale price, which
| is not legal in the EU. Yes, Dorico is selling their own product,
| but it is based on the ownership of of finale. On the other hand
| it seems pretty obvious that a lot of value is being created for
| the customers.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| There's no resale here? EU resale law is mostly around the fact
| that makers can't dictate to shops or other resellers what
| their sale price should be.
|
| Vendors - whether original makers or resellers - are free to
| offer differential pricing to customers, as long as they don't
| break equality laws.
| macmac wrote:
| I am absolutely not saying that it is clear something is
| illegal here, but there kind of is a resale, the product
| being sold is an upgrade from finale to dorico, which can
| only be sold if finale confirms the existance of a finale
| license. And the parties have obviously agree what the price
| must be.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Why must they have agreed on price?
|
| Only Steinberg/Dorico are making a sale, I don't see any
| reason to think Finale are forcing their hand on price.
|
| More likely it's Finale says "offer a good price to our
| users, and in return we'll promote it to our user-base",
| and Steinberg decide what that price will be.
|
| Confirmation that the license exists has to be handled a
| bit carefully for GDPR reasons, but that's not
| insurmountable. Competitor cross-grades are pretty common
| practice in those (fewer and fewer each year) sectors which
| still sell perpetual software licenses.
| macmac wrote:
| Well, finale is advertising the price as an offer to
| their customers, it is hard to see how they could do that
| without an agreement. How else could they make the offer?
| Price discussions between competitors is an absolute no-
| go under EU law.
| dahart wrote:
| What makes you think Steinberg didn't dictate the price?
| How are they competitors when Finale is dead? You're
| referring to price fixing laws between ongoing
| competition, which is illegal in this US too. This is not
| that by any stretch of the imagination.
| thombles wrote:
| I have fond memories playing with Finale 3 on Win3.11. After that
| it seemed everyone I knew musically was on Sibelius. What I found
| most remarkable about that old release is that it came in a huge
| cardboard box with printed manuals describing how to use every
| function.
| worstspotgain wrote:
| This was a storied name in the history of computer music. I can't
| help but feel that its EOL'ing is a huge missed pun opportunity,
| though. At least call it the Grand Finale for chrissakes.
| philjohn wrote:
| Gosh - that's a blast from the past!
|
| I remember back in the 90's when studying for my Music A-Level
| you essentially had two choices for notation - Finale if you were
| on a PC, and Sibelius if you had an Acorn.
|
| For that reason, the music department at my school had Acorn
| Archimedes and then Acorn RiscPC machines.
|
| Sibelius was the all around better piece of software - but I
| "only" had a windows PC at home, so it was Finale or nothing.
| swarnie wrote:
| A bit later on in the mid 2000s when I 100% wasn't cheating my
| way through GCSE Music, Sibelius on Windows PC was the
| standard.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| Relevant Tantacrul video on the erosion of the Sibelius UI:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI
|
| I used Sibelius extensively circa version 5, and refused to
| upgrade for many years. I used it to get through my music minor
| in college. I still have the installer and a k*ygen on a hard
| drive somewhere since they stopped selling licenses to it and I
| lost mine. Still my preferred software, and yes I've tried
| Musescore. It's not nearly the same. Old software still works.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| As people are talking about Dorico, a little story about how it
| happened (and, very nearly, didn't).
|
| So Sibelius began as a project by the Finn brothers, then in
| their early 20s in Cambridge, some time around 1990. Originally
| it was written for the Acorn Archimedes, a British desktop
| computer running on ARM RISC processors. (They were decent
| machines, but having a big platform for native software was THE
| thing that mattered for personal computing in the 90s, and being
| essentially UK-only, Archimedes as a platform was doomed - as
| with Clive Sinclair's C5 light EV, the right idea at the wrong
| time).
|
| Sibelius grew and thrived for 15 years, porting to PC & Mac on
| the way, enjoying wide adoption in education especially outside
| the US, growing to maybe 50 or 100 people, and became Finale's
| main competitor. In the mid 2000's they were acquired by Avid,
| who saw the potential to tie in its notation platform with their
| recording packages for Hollywood and other media composers. The
| founders stepped back, received royal awards from the Queen, and
| have kept a fairly low profile since.
|
| Things carried on OK for a few years, but then when the financial
| crisis hits, the suits and bean-counters running Avid got Ideas.
| And you know that's not going to end well.
|
| So to understand the importance of what happens next, you need to
| realise that there are maybe as few as a hundred people in the
| world who understand both music engraving and C++ application
| development to an advanced level. Either skill on its own, no big
| deal. Both together? The Venn overlap on that is _tiny_.
|
| And at that point in time, twenty or thirty of them were working
| for Sibelius, the same again or a few more at Coda MakeMusic
| working on Finale, and a handful of others at minor competitors
| and F/OSS contenders such as Rosegarden. This is 2009 ish -
| before the mobile/tablet revolution really gets going, and
| interactive Web apps aren't quite at the maturity level to do
| professional-quality music engraving with smooth, low-latency UI.
|
| So the top-level Avid suits find out that Western senior engineer
| salaries are $70K or thereabouts, whereas you can hire a senior
| engineer in Ukraine for $12K, and send out a decree that ALL
| engineering functions will be offshored to their development
| partner in Kiev.
|
| I'm not knocking the Ukrainians. Clever, well-educated,
| innovative and hard-working to a (wo)man. But... rapidly
| offshoring a codebase with 15 years of history, addressing what
| is a very highly specialised domain, almost a culture in its own
| right, which the vast majority of contract engineers would have
| zero understanding of?
|
| So, yep. Avid has a profitable (I assume) product, a mature team
| consisting of a third of the people in the world with that skill
| set, most of whom are doing it for the love and none of whom are
| overpaid, and what do the bean-counters do?
|
| Yep, you guessed it. Fire the lot. "For the stock price!"
|
| Now the professional composer community isn't huge. But they're
| sharp as a pin and well-connected, and this news is, obviously,
| not taken well. Thankfully the team's PM, Daniel Spreadbury, has
| the presence of mind to phone a friend at Yamaha-Steinberg. And
| over the next few weeks they're able to hammer out a deal where
| almost the entire engineering team is re-hired.
|
| The way I heard it told, he convinced them to give him and his
| team three years and sufficient budget to build a "new Sibelius".
| In the end, it took them five-and-a-half, but such is the way of
| software projects.
|
| So anyway, kudos to Daniel Spreadbury and whoever at Yamaha-
| Steinberg had the foresight to invest in this. And the opposite
| to the suits at Avid, who seem to have been bought out by a PE
| firm last year. So I guess triple yachts all round for them.
| skybrian wrote:
| Meanwhile, I'm pretty happy with Musescore to make accordion
| sheet music for myself. Is Dorico worthwhile for amateurs?
| breckinloggins wrote:
| Dorico is exceptional software, but it's expensive and there's
| a learning curve.
|
| If you have the money to spend and like fiddling with pro
| software I'd recommend it, but if MuseScore meets your needs
| then I'd stick with it. It seems to be in good hands and should
| continue to improve over time.
| amiga386 wrote:
| If you've learnt how to use Musescore, and you have no external
| reason to learn Dorico or Sibelius, e.g. you need to
| collaborate with others already using them, then you're good.
| Editing is fast enough, people reading your music won't notice
| a difference once it's printed out.
|
| The only thing I can think of is playback with VSTs and other
| fancy tools (e.g. Philharmonik, NotePerformer) - the fanciest
| ones are tied to Dorico/Sibelius/Finale. MuseScore now has its
| own such playback system, Muse Sounds, but each person will
| have their own preference.
| honkycat wrote:
| Always crazy to me there isn't a "blender for music" equivalent.
|
| Seems like a fun project! I wonder if the problem is licensing.
| greenpizza13 wrote:
| There is! MuseScore.
|
| https://musescore.org/en
| honkycat wrote:
| Yeah, Musescore doesn't quite fit though.
|
| It doesn't really work like any other DAW.
|
| It has a strong focus on composing sheet music, as opposed to
| recording and producing full tracks.
| rdlw wrote:
| Well yeah, that's what Finale is and what this thread is
| about. If you're talking about standard DAWs then your
| initial comment was a non sequitur
| ta2112 wrote:
| Oh no! I'll need to get to work converting all those old Finale
| files to MusicXML or something. Hopefully they will release a
| tool for viewing and converting Finale files beyond the 1 year
| retirement.
| vintermann wrote:
| I used Finale in the last year of high school (roughly), 1999. On
| PowerPC macs with MacOS 8 or 9. It was unbelievably bad. The UI
| was absolutely terrible - it had a huge photoshop/paint-like
| "drawing tools" palette, but what was in this palette changed
| depending on other things. Exotic things like resizing note heads
| or stems were easy. Basic things like a pickup beat you would
| never, ever figure out how to do correctly on your own.
|
| The developers had also given up trying to get rendering to work
| correctly. They had a "rerender the whole UI from scratch" menu
| option for when the rendering inevitably messed up horribly.
|
| It also crashed a lot.
|
| It may honestly have been a factor in me deciding that I could do
| better in programming than in music, because I felt like even I
| could do better than that.
|
| I have heard musician friends claim it got better in later years,
| but I don't quite trust it, since I know what musicians put up
| with in terms of awkward user interfaces.
|
| So, good riddance.
| bcx wrote:
| I am always curious about how companies like this end. For fun I
| did some basic research on archive.org.
|
| It appears that around 2015 the headquarters for make music moved
| from MN to CO.
| https://web.archive.org/web/20140703151047/http://www.finale...
|
| This is around the same time that Greg (who wrote the blog post
| joined Make Music Inc), who also happens to live in Boulder.
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregorydellera/details/experienc...
|
| Previously Greg was president of Alfred.com
| (https://www.linkedin.com/company/alfred-music-publishing-co-...)
|
| My guess is there was likely some move behind the scenes to boost
| revenue, and keep the business running initiated by a founder, or
| board member, which resulted in hiring Greg, relocating the
| headquarters from MN to CO, and probably also shifted the future
| of makemusic.
|
| would be an interesting read :)
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregorydellera/details/experienc...
| ksr wrote:
| Note to anyone hoping to export MusicXML from Finale into
| Musescore: Musescore 4's MusicXML import (and export) is
| horrendous. It has even regressed compared to MuseScore 3 which
| was already pretty bad soon as you started getting ambitious.
| chrisldgk wrote:
| It seems now is as good a time as any for people to try MuseScore
| [1], the FOSS alternative to Finale and Dorico.
|
| [1] https://musescore.org/
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