Rats in the grain - Sibelius software
I realize that it all boils down to making a profit but this is downright stupid.
I have been playing keyboards since I was nine or ten and I am now 61. Although I don't write my work down (notate it - I am not doing orchestra scores or anything where I need the actual sheet music - MIDI files on the hard drive are perfect for me), I realize that there is a huge need for this and right now, the hands-down best application is a program called Sibelius.
What is happening is that a company called Avid, purchased Sibelius and shut down its primary development site including the two brothers who initially wrote it. They are going to outsource development to the lowest bidder.
From the
Sibelius Users website:
Sibelius is in crisis!
The world's leading music scoring software, Sibelius®, winner of the Queen's Innovation Award and OBE's for its creators the Finn brothers, is in crisis: this will be of real concern to all Sibelius users. This site aims to do something about it.
On July 2nd Sibelius' parent company, Avid Technology announced the closure of Sibelius UK, the Finsbury Park home of the Sibelius development team. Avid claims this will make no difference either to Sibelius or to its technical support.
As with ProTools, Avid's strategy is to send the coding and maintenance work offshore.
Based on its latest published figures Avid is in financial trouble. Right after the most recent stockholders meeting, all the Avid board of directors sold significant shares of stock, clearly a co-ordinated sale. Simultaneously, several key executives resigned, including Vice President, CFO and CTO. Avid is short of cash and desperately trying to shore up its liquidity with reckless cost cutting.
Sibelius is viable as a standalone company, but without sustained pressure from its users, Avid will try to run it offshore, most likely in the Ukraine. This short-term thinking is solely to ease Avid through its present cash crisis, not in any way for the benefit of Sibelius users. In fact it will effectively destroy Sibelius.
Do you agree that Avid's decision is reckless and places the future of Sibelius innovation, maintenance and support at risk?
If so, please join us in convincing Avid that it is in everyone’s best interests for them to sell Sibelius. This will still ease its cash crisis, but will ensure Sibelius lives on in safe hands.
Some people were mentioning that there is a strong competitor in an application called
Finale by
Make Music. Bzzzzztttt!!!
Make Music is in the
middle of being bought out at yard-sale prices to an "Equity Partner" who will no doubt do the same thing -- run with the current version as long as possible while disbanding the original development team. Stretch those dollars with zero intent of any long-term profitability.
Makes me glad that I stuck with
Cakewalk Sonar for my studio. I recently did a big upgrade and was toying with going over whole-hog to Avid ProTools but did not. Yaaay!
Putzes -- not willing to think long term. What would be awesome is if they hung onto the software for another year and then open sourced it. Let them get their last bit of money and then do the right thing -- I would give into a Kickstarter program to fund development.
I am still fuming about Apple's purchase of
Emagic and its dropping
Sound Diver. That was one of the best MIDI and Instrument editors bar none and when Apple discontinued the Windows development and brought out the 'beta' OS X version, I was close to buying a MAC just to run it. They then dropped the product.
And yes, there is Midi Quest and I use it but its interface is very busy where Sound Diver was very clean. I have to use a very large window to see my setup where Sound Diver didn't require all the screen real-estate for splash graphics and pretty knobs and meters, etc...
Posted by DaveH at August 4, 2012 3:09 PM