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The End of Finale

finalemusic.com

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Re: The End of Finale

#111

Post by wvenable »

dahart wrote: post #105
domador wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ye…

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. Thankful…

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.

Re: The End of Finale

#112

Post by altruios »

zarzavat wrote: post #50
miclill wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just a guess, but maybe the struck a deal with Steinberg that does not allow them to do this?

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.

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).

Re: The End of Finale

#113

Post by wvenable »

dahart wrote: post #100
vunderba wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> 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.

Re: The End of Finale

#114

Post by fweimer »

dahart wrote: post #101
Lammy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody would be able to replace the unreleased portions with new code.

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.

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.

Re: The End of Finale

#115

Post by wvenable »

dahart wrote: post #81
skywhopper wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 t…

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.

Re: The End of Finale

#116

Post by vintermann »

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.

Re: The End of Finale

#117

Post by dahart »

wvenable wrote: post #109
dahart wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 MakeM…

"...will continue to work as long as your current computer is working." This doesn't seem dumb to you?

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.

Re: The End of Finale

#118

Post by bcx »

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...

Re: The End of Finale

#119

Post by ksr »

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.

Re: The End of Finale

#120

Post by dahart »

wvenable wrote: post #115
dahart wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

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.

> 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.

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