Post-Mortem Software Support Community

[PeterVadala]

How could the Finale composer community create a kind of membership-based support community which would continue to develop Finale after the activations end, developing ways to overcome the activation hurdle and overcome other types of bugs and potential viruses -- kind of like the Military's continued use of Windows XP?

This is unacceptable and someone needs to be sued in a class-action.

[BuonTempi]

How could the Finale composer community create a kind of membership-based support community which would continue to develop Finale after the activations end

It couldn't. The source code has not been released, most likely because it contains components that MM has licensed from others.

Even if they did: it's millions of lines of spaghetti and even a team of full-time engineers, who know it and work on it every day, can't do anything with.

This is unacceptable and someone needs to be sued in a class-action.

You could of course contribute to a class action suit, if you think that would cost you less time and money.

[miker]

<moderator hat off>

C’mon, guys, really? Things go obsolete. Will Ford stock parts for a Model A? Why won’t MacPaint run on my new Mac? Why can’t I book passage on the Lusitania? Seen a stegosaurus, lately?

Maybe one of you “I’m a programmer, why can’t they fix that?” guys can write a “simple”program to mass convert Finale files. Maybe the community will all chip in to pay you.

I’m not going to go off on a three-page screed about it. There are really only two issues, here. 1. Converting your old files to whatever will permanently allow your descendants to open them at some time in the future, and 2. The length of time you will have to spend learning a new program. Really, nobody here is stupid. If they were, they would never have gotten as far as they have in Finale. Pull up your panties, and deal with it.

<moderator hat back on>

[motet]

[...it's millions of lines of spaghetti and even a team of full-time engineers, who know it and work on it every day, can't do anything with...

We don't really know that it's spaghetti or otherwise poorly programmed--that the current crew can't handle it could just be their level of expertise. But Mike is right that it's probably neither here nor there.

Being able to read a Finale file and convert it to Sibelius or Dorico would be a job for the Sibelius or Dorico crew, not a third party, I think. Since all the programs are quite different, it may not be much better than using MusicXML.

[PeterVadala]

The coding is not an unfixable problem. Finale’s worst problem is that they are too good - like the old Hollywood movies that today’s can’t compete with, and so the IP holder - like Yamaha-Doniko, is attempting to rope everyone into a never-ending subscription for an inferior product.

The solution might simply lie in not upgrading windows. If I’m not mistaken, this is the chief cost irk of the MakeMusic programmers. The essentials of Finale have not changed a lot, though it has gotten more intuitive over the years and added a pretty killer sample synthesizer, notwithstanding inconsistent time for human playback which made it difficult to export iso tracks for demos - but great for previews. It’s a composer’s dream when you don’t have an actual orchestra nearby.

The other major problem was likely greed. Finale was bought out by a software holding company that doesn’t understand the core business - and they were looking to make a quick profit. This is not a software problem, intrinsically, even though the CEO is being paid a lot of money to tell us what “the future” of music itself is. How much is he making, I wonder…… anyway

There are pieces of software that instruct you not to upgrade.

Before suing, because attorneys are an additional expense, the first thing to do would be to attempt to determine whether there are enough people willing and able to pay MakeMusic, or its owner (?) if they would be willing to contract to keep fixing whatever bugs remain in its present state. However, we as users, to minimize costs, would have to commit to a single version of windows (or Linux with WINE) which works best. It seems toward the end Windows was their primary design.

So the first question might be - how to better zero on a stable Windows version? Processor type? I know Intel 7’s and 9’s are garbage because I’m in the unfortunate position of having to sell them - impurities in the silicon make them crashable. Lots of sad faces this Christmas for kids getting intels.

I’m running finale 27 on a Lenovo gaming laptop with an AMD processor with 8gb ram from a long time ago and it’s been fairly stable- but I just bought a new HP gaming desktop with an amd ryzen-7 for finale.

Notwithstanding the general dud Intel chips — is it possible that some newer chips just aren’t compatible with the software? Is a ryzen 7 (or 9) however fast, even desirable for finale or does it need to work on an amd-ryzen-5 or I-5?

Is anyone running finale on a ryzen-7 or -9 processor? Can we attempt to diagnose certain manufacturers whose computer doesn’t meet spec?

Having a cooperative developer staff at finale would help recommend specs for buying a new machine - as well as possible solutions for when they shoot the activation servers, to design a workstation around the latest version.

At the same time, Yamaha has paid them lots of *** to not release the source-code. Cracks exist on the Web, and cracks can be legally used (this is not legal advice). But cracks are bandaids.


When Finale works, it works - so — how does one go about creating the ideal operating system environment for it to work—- is the immediate question, I think, and then the activation lockup extortion they’re doing. I have to ask whether perhaps - would they intentionally put malicious code in the latest update?

Next question is - how much money are they extorting us for, and can we pay the ransom to the new owner of makemusic, the holding company, and/or doniko-Yamaha?

And that’s exactly what they’re doing. They’re extorting us for the ability to continue using what we paid for, when you think through the whole thing carefully!

The parent holding company killing music is Peaksware 285 century place, louisville, co, 80027. Hopefully they do the right thing.

How could the Finale composer community create a kind of membership-based support community which would continue to develop Finale after the activations end

It couldn't. The source code has not been released, most likely because it contains components that MM has licensed from others.

Even if they did: it's millions of lines of spaghetti and even a team of full-time engineers, who know it and work on it every day, can't do anything with.

This is unacceptable and someone needs to be sued in a class-action.

You could of course contribute to a class action suit, if you think that would cost you less time and money.

[PeterVadala]

It’s common in business apps to use legacy operating systems to keep legacy programs running in perpetuity. The airlines still use command-prompt era software. The military uses XP.

Finale is FINE now. This is corporate greed from holding company Peaksware sabotaging the ability of software which should be able to work forever, further exacerbated and perhaps catalyzed by the Microsoft ecosystem, and the fact that most consumers are too dumb to run offline machines that windows and apple can’t blow up every five years or so. Just use the internet or anything that needs the internet on another computer.

Once you fix the problem of a renegade operating system environment, and Microsoft butting heads with Intel and all Pc manufacturers for platform dominance- the problem gets a lot simpler and more manageable.

Of course, you could keep paying Microsoft and bill gates, and Yamaha-doniko forever - but I’d rather choose the smart, “obsolete” way.

Ignorance is not bliss, and having a “great attitude” about being extorted is a ***’s deal.

<moderator hat off>

C’mon, guys, really? Things go obsolete. Will Ford stock parts for a Model A? Why won’t MacPaint run on my new Mac? Why can’t I book passage on the Lusitania? Seen a stegosaurus, lately?

Maybe one of you “I’m a programmer, why can’t they fix that?” guys can write a “simple”program to mass convert Finale files. Maybe the community will all chip in to pay you.

I’m not going to go off on a three-page screed about it. There are really only two issues, here. 1. Converting your old files to whatever will permanently allow your descendants to open them at some time in the future, and 2. The length of time you will have to spend learning a new program. Really, nobody here is stupid. If they were, they would never have gotten as far as they have in Finale. Pull up your panties, and deal with it.

<moderator hat back on>

[PeterVadala]

When you distill the facts, this is about a greedy private equity (?) holding company called Peaksware waging greedy lawfare against both the common man and the successful composer alike. It’s an assault on music. It’s shooting a healthy horse for glue. Maybe if more people had access to great composition tools like finale music wouldn’t *** so much today.

We have access to it, and future generations should as well without being extorted monthly. And we certainly shouldn’t be deprived of our ability to use what we bought.

The only thing, besides Peaksware’s and Yamaha-Domino’s ransomware approach to extort us all, which can destroy finale functionality is - the next Windows Update.

<moderator hat off>

C’mon, guys, really? Things go obsolete. Will Ford stock parts for a Model A? Why won’t MacPaint run on my new Mac? Why can’t I book passage on the Lusitania? Seen a stegosaurus, lately?

Maybe one of you “I’m a programmer, why can’t they fix that?” guys can write a “simple”program to mass convert Finale files. Maybe the community will all chip in to pay you.

I’m not going to go off on a three-page screed about it. There are really only two issues, here. 1. Converting your old files to whatever will permanently allow your descendants to open them at some time in the future, and 2. The length of time you will have to spend learning a new program. Really, nobody here is stupid. If they were, they would never have gotten as far as they have in Finale. Pull up your panties, and deal with it.

<moderator hat back on>

[BuonTempi]

doniko

It's spelt "Dorico", as I think you already know.

I know you're upset, but you're just ranting nonsense. Finale has not been a healthy horse for years. It hasn't made a profit for years. And there's plenty of examples of bad engraving using it -- just go to CPDL. If you know what you're doing, sure.

You can't possibly know what the deal was with Steinberg, so conspiracy theories about extortion and paying not to release the code are just that.
But you can keep using Finale, or go to MuseScore, or anywhere else you like. You're not forced to use Dorico.

[PeterVadala]

I just wanted to volunteer than I'm the head of an extant music and content-creation non-profit which might be able to steward a support community, not as its central purpose but as a project, for the legal purposes of making sure that resources are handled responsibly. It is a religious organization which some may find objectionable, but I just wanted to throw the idea out there. (WGIH.org) I would also be willing to perhaps be a part of someone else's non-profit.

I already reached out directly to ASCAP's head honchos of public relations and haven't heard anything from them - frankly, I think that they would probably be among the most appropriate organizations to take up a fight like this on behalf of composers and performers; BMI does more electronic stuff and so composition is less important to them probably.

Just some suggestions about how to create a financial vehicle which may help in, say, creating pooled resources to keep Finale alive. I'm very wary of crowdsourcing platforms because they always seem to want a piece of the pie, and are more geared toward one-shot fundraising efforts rather than continued efforts.

When it comes down to it, the spending dollars are out here in the composition community, and I think any composer given the choice would choose to have continued support for Finale rather than converting to an inferior system.

I'm so glad my last piano purchase was a Roland and not a Yamaha.

Just some musings... By the way, I have tips on how to get the best deals on a Roland. Purchased one for $400 new last march...

How could the Finale composer community create a kind of membership-based support community which would continue to develop Finale after the activations end

It couldn't. The source code has not been released, most likely because it contains components that MM has licensed from others.

Even if they did: it's millions of lines of spaghetti and even a team of full-time engineers, who know it and work on it every day, can't do anything with.

This is unacceptable and someone needs to be sued in a class-action.

You could of course contribute to a class action suit, if you think that would cost you less time and money.

[PeterVadala]

Barbershop Miker, I want to appeal to your sense of musical taste a moment. And I'm someone who has used technology as a tool to help create feature-length movies, and I studied Media theory. Question for thought is -- is music getting better or worse in America? Is it aiding the human condition more, or is it becoming more homogenous? The purpose of my asking is -- that real music comes from thought, not technological tricks and shortcuts. And people who are serious about writing original music, note by note, use software like Finale. It has an effect on the quality of music produced.

Furthermore, I want to be clear that I don't intend any disrespect. I don't believe most people here are stupid, otherwise they wouldn't be using Finale to begin with. It has a steep learning curve, and unlike so many dime-store, "user-friendly" solutions, it lets you actually write what you want, and doesn't write it for you. As a student of media creation, so many times the technology gets in the way. Finale is a composer's tool.

Even though Finale users aren't stupid, perhaps they're simply unaware of some of the nuances of the operating system environment we have been stuck in for a very long time. So, I'm approaching this subject of how to continue with the experience of having founded a music industry non-profit, who also happens to sell and be trained in Windows computers, including Microsoft Copilot.

Furthermore, I was educated very well by a computer science teacher who warned us about the useless upgrade cycle. If Windows upgrades actually degrade your computer and throw a monkey wrench in the programs that matter the most, all while charging you more money, is that really an upgrade?

And so while I am not against progress, I believe the never-ending upgrades are merely just a veneer of progress for the purpose of exploiting the end user for the purpose of extracting money from them.

I stand on my statement that Finale 26 runs absolutely fine on an 8GB Lenovo ideapad with a "special edition" pre-ryzen AMD chip to this very day. It's only by happenstance that the machine, by the Grace of the Divine, is simply not qualified to upgrade to Windows 11. For a 15-y-oish machine, it's remarkably stable in running Finale, which seems to be comfortably functional with just 8 Gigabytes of ram.

So I would maybe suggest that perhaps "crossgrading," to use the Model T metaphor, is more like trading in the horse-and-buggy for something like a donkey and buggy. A donkey named Dorico. More money for more headaches.

PeakWare, Yamaha-Dorico, and MakeMusic are all betting on all of us Americans, their own users, being dumber than to understand what's going on here. Au contraire, I'm betting on the Finale userbase being SMARTER.

<moderator hat off>

C’mon, guys, really? Things go obsolete. Will Ford stock parts for a Model A? Why won’t MacPaint run on my new Mac? Why can’t I book passage on the Lusitania? Seen a stegosaurus, lately?

Maybe one of you “I’m a programmer, why can’t they fix that?” guys can write a “simple”program to mass convert Finale files. Maybe the community will all chip in to pay you.

I’m not going to go off on a three-page screed about it. There are really only two issues, here. 1. Converting your old files to whatever will permanently allow your descendants to open them at some time in the future, and 2. The length of time you will have to spend learning a new program. Really, nobody here is stupid. If they were, they would never have gotten as far as they have in Finale. Pull up your panties, and deal with it.

<moderator hat back on>

[Joshua266]

How could the Finale composer community create a kind of membership-based support community which would continue to develop Finale after the activations end, developing ways to overcome the activation hurdle and overcome other types of bugs and potential viruses -- kind of like the Military's continued use of Windows XP?

This is unacceptable and someone needs to be sued in a class-action.

It is possible to establish a membership-based Finale composer community to carry on development. A committed group may focus on bug fixes, software maintenance, and getting around activation problems. Future users may find Finale useful if it continues to be supported by open-source models or community patches, which are analogous to the assistance provided for historical systems.

[BuonTempi]

It is possible to establish a membership-based Finale composer community to carry on development. A committed group may focus on bug fixes, software maintenance, and getting around activation problems. Future users may find Finale useful if it continues to be supported by open-source models or community patches, which are analogous to the assistance provided for historical systems.

No, it isn't possible. How are you going to fix bugs if you don't have the code?