Adam,

I am not a Finale god by any means, but I have been using Finale for a long time and have seen it grow under Coda and then MakeMusic. I admit, developers keep the planned direction of development (as well as any actual features) very much under their hats. The most significant development in the past few years was to make the code base 64-bit compatible, likely to avoid losing their entire Mac customer base in one fell swoop.

It appears that, by and large, Finale is content with their posture: that is, to provide maximum flexibility even at the expense of foregoing automating things significantly as some newer programs have been able to do. Realize that Finale must build on a code base several decades old. Although they could rewrite all that, the question is whether they see the cost/benefit of that more productive than doing what they seem to be doing, making certain functions clearer or more flexible. I doubt the developers have stopped work on the program, although changes may seem small depending on how one uses the program. Some years ago, Finale moved to a two-year update cycle IIRC; considering that COVID has affected many industries in the past year, that may have put them behind what they had planned, so I still hold out hope to see something down the road.

I do not recall the score-sharing site for Finale scores, but then I would not have been that interested in score-sharing, so I may have missed it. There is certainly no MakeMusic sponsored score-sharing site now outside of SmartMusic, which is something altogether different. Do not discount music XML for sharing scores with colleagues who use other notation packages. Finale's implementation of XML for both export and import is among the most advanced.

I find it curious that you are so concerned about Finale’s future development but are running an older version. I do not miss the old days of annual upgrades @ $99–$129 annually.

The score sharing site is long gone. Copyright issues may have contributed to it but I’m not certain.

MusicXML exists to share scores with users of other platforms but it’s a tool kit. Success depends on its implementation across the board. Dorico is notably behind the curve—not good. Michael Good recently gave an interview in Scoring Notes about the upcoming MusicXML 4 that promises greater cross-platform compatibility (but only if integrated by everyone).

https://www.scoringnotes.com/podcast/michael-good-the-inventor-of-musicxml/ 

Speaking of which, anyone interested in the development of notation apps and the latest news should be subscribed to Scoring Notes — it’s free.

Your ‘Gods of Finale’ do not post here. Finale has a blog and there’s Scoring Notes. 

Thank you both J and Mike for your replies.