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Is Sonar abandonware now?


Logan_4600

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Typically abandonware is software that the owner has released without license and support. That is different from just stopping, sale development  and support, because it includes the express or effective permission to anyone to use the software without paying for it. Consider the old car in the barn. You may not be driving it or maintaining it, and you may not have any intention of selling it to anyone, but it still belongs to you and you could still charge someone with auto theft it they took it. It is pretty rare for the owner of software rights to give them away to the world, although not so unusual for the owner to no longer care if they are stolen, and not pursue the thief. Much of the "abandonware" available for free on the net is basically in this latter category. Short of issuing a new license that, like some in the Creative Commons system allows anyone to use it freely, or making some explicit statement that the product is being transferred to the public domain, copyright stays with the product until it expires, and ownership of the copyright can almost always be assigned to the original owner his heirs of assigns. So cracked versions of SONAR are almost certainly still cracked, and their use distribution or modification by anyone not licensed is not legal. 

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15 minutes ago, slartabartfast said:

Typically abandonware is software that the owner has released without license and support. That is different from just stopping, sale development  and support, because it includes the express or effective permission to anyone to use the software without paying for it. Consider the old car in the barn. You may not be driving it or maintaining it, and you may not have any intention of selling it to anyone, but it still belongs to you and you could still charge someone with auto theft it they took it. It is pretty rare for the owner of software rights to give them away to the world, although not so unusual for the owner to no longer care if they are stolen, and not pursue the thief. Much of the "abandonware" available for free on the net is basically in this latter category. Short of issuing a new license that, like some in the Creative Commons system allows anyone to use it freely, or making some explicit statement that the product is being transferred to the public domain, copyright stays with the product until it expires, and ownership of the copyright can almost always be assigned to the original owner his heirs of assigns. So cracked versions of SONAR are almost certainly still cracked, and their use distribution or modification by anyone not licensed is not legal. 

I really thought that software fell to abandonware by not being selled anymore, nor patched or supported in any form

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BandLab owns the copyrighted intellectual property (software code) that was Sonar, and much of that is carried forward into the Cakewalk by BandLab software release. So really doubt they are going to be inclined to give away proprietary technology, beyond the free use of their current product. So not really abandoned, and ownership is clear.

I'm not sure what the legal standing of your software license agreement with the former Cakewalk company would be at this point, but I would consult a lawyer before attempting anything shady. BandLab probably acquired those rights too, but that would just be my guess.

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Wikipedia:

Abandonware is a product, typically software, ignored by its owner and manufacturer, and for which no support is available[1]. Although such software is usually still under copyright, the owner may not be tracking copyright violations.

 

Dictionary.com:

Abandonware is computer software which is no longer sold or supported by its publisher

 

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I guess it depends what you define as a product.

As far as I'm concerned, CbB is the same product as Sonar - it's just a newer version that has been re-branded.

It's really not that different from when Pro Audio 9 was followed by Sonar 1. I'll bet that over 90% of the code was the same.

The only difference with CbB is that it's now published by a new company.

When CbB came out, I suspect that over  99% of the code was the same as Sonar.  After all, the only real changes were a few splash screens and the bug fixes that were meant to go into Sonar 2017.11.

It's fairly common for companies not to support older versions of their products. 

Is Excel 95 abandonware, even though Excel 365 is available? I'd say no. Excel 365 is just a newer version, and the company doesn't support the old version... and why would they? They're not going to backport every bug-fix to every previous version.

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