Please do this. If my PC crashes and I can't register it anymore just is not fair. If I own it, I should be allowed to use it. Maybe just turn off requiring registration if you own it.

Yes! Way to go. Only way to enable Musescore (and other Apps)
to directly open Finale files.

Was coming here to say this. I respect sunsetting software where the code is too dated to be worth the effort to save it, but if they're not going to make any money on it anymore at all, why not just make it open source and free? Thousands of users will be put at ease, and I'm sure many will continue to tweak and improve it. Seems like an obvious move.

Also yeah, *definitely* turn off any sort of registration requirement. Just let it run without a license, period.

Adamantly agree Finale should be open sourced.  I mean, if Finale is truly being discontinued, this shouldn't be an issue, right?

There are a few "quirks" that have been on the Finale request backlog that I would love to be able to go in and fix myself….

Even if MakeMusic planned to do this and was not bound by any agreement with Dorico, they would hardly announce it now.

+1 for sure. I'm told there are copyright issues that could get in the way, but in principle, this should indeed be open-sourced, unless they can sell it to a developer (unlikely, and the code I'm told is a mess of spaghetti code at this point).

Looks like someone has a petition going for this already, share wide:

https://www.change.org/p/release-finale-music-notation-software-to-the-open-source-community

I also put this question in as a support ticket. Here is the reply I received. The most interesting line for me is when he states that MM felt that "...releasing Finale as an open source competitor would be bad faith to those folks over [at Dorico]." Full reply below:

====

Hello,
 
Thank you for contacting MakeMusic! An open source version of Finale was in consideration during talks about how we should handle the brand and our customers. However, we've decided that Finale users would benefit better from transitioning over to Dorico. Especially the professional engravers and composers who would need a professional-level application without any major interruptions to their time sensitive jobs and workflows. We believe that Dorico is the new industry standard moving for professional engraving and releasing Finale as an open source competitor would be bad faith to those folks over there. I hope that explains our rationale and I encourage you to try out the Dorico free trial if you haven't already: https://www.steinberg.net/dorico/trial/. 
 
All Best,

I don't know what kind of contracts they have, but it looks like a contract with Steinbergeim to transfer customers. We'll try to sell you as many of our users as possible and somehow we'll make money on it together. I'm not saying it's bad, I've already bought Dorico myself, but it's a painful journey before I can produce anything with this program.

However, for me, this whole situation is very traumatic.
It turns out that an honest customer who bought software has no rights in a clash with a corporation that does whatever it wants with the product sold to you and doesn't respect your opinion.
There is a leash in the form of activation, without which the purchased program is useless. Last year I bought a second license for Finale27 without any knowledge of what would happen in the future.
Suddenly it turns out that maybe in a year or a few years I won't be able to activate this product. Some geniuses on this forum give the following advice- I have to look for a few machines and install the program on them with the hope in the future that no computer will break down, be stolen or destroyed due to some other random accidents.

I think I no longer want my work to be 100% dependent on people who only have dollars in their eyes and do not care about other values. I do not know what will happen with Dorico in a few years, for example. Maybe it will also disappear like Finale after 30 years. Therefore, in consequence I will probably choose Muse Score, because it does not require activation, is open source and is constantly being developed.

No one knows if Finale was still making money but with that announcement it stopped. A small business would have shut down immediately including this site. That's not what happened. The next year of tech support, keeping the servers running after as they promise, helping Steinberg with the change and on and on and on ... all that costs money. 

It's been pointed out by others that any Mac built since 2012 will run 27. You will be able to use Finale as long as you want or until someday when the server shuts down and your Mac does too and you don't have a backup and you can't transfer your license. I saw in the deleted thread someone explained to you how to do this. You can install it on two computers. Get a backup sometime in the next year.

No one cares about your trauma. Figure it out and get over it. Make some music. You might like Dorico.

What you wrote about using backup copies and computers has already been discussed. It is also obvious that I continue working with music, because the end of Finale is not a reason to stop working. I will definitely get to know Dorico, that's why I bought it, and I'm already doing it. However, the point of this problem is the trauma of all the customers who paid for Finale for years and that, as you wrote, no one cares about their trauma. But that's a completely different level and place for discussion.
As for money? Maybe an attempt to make money for Make Music would be to maintain a server where, for an annual fee, each of us could continue to store our activations? It's not much, but it's something.

PF Slow - with the newest Mac update that dropped today, Apple computer models as far back as 2017 won't work with Finale any longer. This puts those Mac users in a tough spot, even if they're going to transfer their work over to Dorico. MusicXML is far from reliable. Owning two computers is cost-prohibitive. As of today, your response is nothing but bad faith towards Finale users. Stop sucking up to the big guy, will you?

" with the newest Mac update that dropped today, Apple computer models as far back as 2017 won't work with Finale any longer."

That's news to me. While I've switched to Dorico, I opened an old Finale file in Sequoia to extract the MIDI to do a recording in Reason 13, and it worked just fine. I also played around with a few things in Finale since I had it open, and nothing stopped working. The same bugs are still there of course (changing tempo in the Playback Settings with Reset Playback does nothing; if I change my audio output Finale totally whigs out on me and I have to restart it, etc). But nothing new in that regard. Keep in mind that technically, MM is still supporting Finale until Aug 2025, so if there is a major incompatibility with macOS Sequoia preventing anyone from using Finale (again, it seems fine to me), MM very likely might address that in a small update. But Sequoia didn't break much over its development cycle, not even some of the usual culprits. It's not a hugely major update; yes the code has of course been significantly modified, but other than some major interface changes with Safari, the ability to control your iPhone from your Mac (cool, but not mission critical of course) and a few other items, it's a work in progress pending Apple Intelligence's gradual roll-out (which is only compatible with iPhone 15 and 16, so my iPhone 14 is not going to get AI).

with the newest Mac update that dropped today, Apple computer models as far back as 2017 won't work with Finale any longer. This puts those Mac users in a tough spot, even if they're going to transfer their work over to Dorico. MusicXML is far from reliable. Owning two computers is cost-prohibitive. As of today, your response is nothing but bad faith towards Finale users. Stop sucking up to the big guy, will you?

Every single Mac built between 2012 through 3rd Q. 2025 will run Finale 27. Period. You are under the incorrect assumption that a Mac needs to run only on the latest OS. This is untrue. A 2017 iMac Pro and 2018 Mini can have seven bootable APFS Volumes if needed, one each into Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma & Sequoia. Option-boot or change boot settings in Preferences to switch. A 2012 can only run a different seven OS but 27 runs only over Mojave and Catalina on these without a hack. Different years have different ranges. My 2023 Studio runs only Ventura, Sonoma & Sequoia. This screen shot shows my main Volume over Sonoma and test Volume over Sequoia:

Nobody has to run a virtual machine or any of that nonsense. Since 2017, all one has to do is to add an APFS Volume using Disk Utility, download Sequoia and install it into that Volume. Install 27. Use Option-Boot to change Volumes at will. This does assume that your Mac is new enough to support a Sequoia Volume (2017 iMac Pro and Mac Pro, most other 2018 and newer Macs). Although Macs going back to 2009 can have this functionality, 2009–2011 cannot run Mojave, the minimum macOS for 27. Here is how to add/delete APFS Volumes:

https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/add-delete-or-erase-apfs-volumes-dskua9e6a110/mac 

Per the MM email

We want to remind all users that this macOS does not meet the system requirements for Finale and is not compatible

Interesting "reminder" since it is their first announcement on the subject. For the last few months, Finale has been running fine over the Sequoia Public Beta and today's General Release with no problems except for some 3rd party plug-ins. NotePerformer runs fine, by the way. None of the many people who have been testing this have found a problem including myself.

Back to that nonsense email from MakeMusic, it was a preemptive strike. Read between the lines. The real announcement should read: If you have any problems of any kind over Sequoia or later, don’t even think of contacting Support.

It's their decision, like it or not. I don't and had a little list of items that I felt had to be fixed and features I wanted to see when the beta round for 28 was announced for those of us who tested 26 & 27.

As for Open Source... the source code was available a number of years ago, not free but no one I knew wanted to buy it. Since part of it powers Make Music Cloud, that ship has sailed.

Muse Group is abandoning it for Muse Score 5 and has hired a number of software and AI engineers to make MuseScore 5 actually good and the de facto notation app for Hal Leonard, bought last year. Their mission statements and press releases are easy to find. The real money is music publishing and their recent acquisition of the worlds largest publisher shows that they mean business—very big business.

Mike, 

Thanks for the thorough reply and the suggestion to have a dual (or multi)-boot environment and the insider perspective. Your technical resumé in your sig is also quite extensive and impressive. I only advocated the VM route since UTM is a free app and the Apple Virtualization Framework on the M-series processors makes that process quite easy. I'm not a fan of rebooting mid-workflow and my system resources are adequate for my uses, though I could see where a VM might be taxed with all of your plugins. Given the activation servers will keep running, I'm less worried about losing access whether Finale lives in a VM or another volume. 

I'm also not surprised MakeMusic shopped Finale around and equally not surprised at the lack of buyers. Let's be honest, anyone who didn't see this announcement coming wasn't paying attention. The manner in which MM handled it was not good, but that's not our focus here. 

I'm also glad to hear that Hal Leonard is throwing its financial weight behind MuseScore 5. I feel like this model benefits everyone the most. Everyone from a broke high school student to a professional engraver can access the same tools. I also would not blame them for keeping the open-source, community developed portions free but selling the professional engraving tools as an add-on. It is sad that Finale has no chance to live on in that sort of hybrid existence.

And that's my whole reason for starting this request thread -- if MM is done with development and no longer needs the code, release the parts that could still be useful for others to develop and maintain. It won't keep Finale around forever but it will extend its lifespan until everyone migrates away.

If you wouldn't mind, please chime in on another discussion I started for to discuss issues we find with Finale and macOS 15.x. I'm trying to keep emotions off of that thread and stick to technical, useful stuff that will enable the community to support each other after MM technical support goes away. Thanks!

https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/26390796407447

Yes one can have other APFS volumes but that then would require booting into it anytime one wants to use Finale. A VM doesn’t have that limitation (Boot Camp did but that is not an option nowadays). Also, as someone posted awhile back here or on the unofficial forum, the authorization is tied to a specific CPU, so if in ten years the authorization server is gone, doesn’t matter how many APFS volumes have Finale installed; assuming you have upgraded the CPU, you’re SOL. A VM, from the explanation, is self-contained and shouldn’t have this issue.

Personally, I have zero plans to do any of this. If F27 had many of the fixes that would make it less onerous at times, then maybe I’d want to hang on for as long as humanly possible. But Finale remains deeply flawed. It works fine with Sequoia; it’s ludicrous for people to claim otherwise when many of us have had no such issues. But a future OS release (and that includes the Windows folks; I’m not sure where they got the idea that Windows updates are always compatible with apps now and forever) could certainly break Finale. Unlikely but it has happened in the past. That’s why I’m hanging on to Finale if I need to open an existing file but will cease using Finale for future compositions. While Dorico is indeed daunting in many ways, it’s well supported and will be for the foreseeable future. Everyone has to make an informed choice for her/his own self. That just happened to be my choice once I got over the initial anger at the sudden announcement of Finale becoming unauthorizable in one year, which then morphed into “indefinitely” (which may be a long time horizon but is certainly finite).

Agree that open-source is likely a nonstarter. I think folks need to figure out how to move on and at least the time horizon for reasonable Finale access seems to be a few more years. Not bad given that it’s been essentially dead for the past 1-2 years.

I think David's "personally, I have zero plans to do any of this" rings like a sensible plan to me, given all that's happened. It sucks, but software changes, and companies take our money with little regard for how their decisions will affect us. Sooner we learn something new (be it Dorico or Musescore or whatever), the sooner we get back to making stuff. Easier to rip the band aid off, as it were.

I might also point out that if MM is done with development and couldn't find a buyer (been there myself, used to have a little app I couldn't sell off), they're probably not gonna be around to enforce the license rules or sue anybody either...

I'm also glad to hear that Hal Leonard is throwing its financial weight behind MuseScore 5.

Not quite. Cyprus based Muse Group (created by Russia based Ultimate Guitar) bought MuseScore, Audacity and others, made musescore.com profitable with their subscription model and bought Hal Leonard outright last December with some of their Billion$. They are flush with cash. Publishing is where the real money is and HL are experts at paying rights holders. MuseScore are just the gateway drug into the world of MG and UG.

The open source community that started it all is "concerned" over the many changes and is feeling marginalized. Well, they shouldn't worry. That model is dead but like in The 6th Sense, they don't know this.

I might also point out that if MM is done with development and couldn't find a buyer...

I didn't say who was selling nor when. In any case, MM is still a going concern and part of a larger company, Peaksware, LLC.

Crying no more Finale, I bought Dorico, but it does not work as Finale. I don't know how I handle a bunch of song for concert without Finale.

For lead band sheets, Finale is the best.

Hoang,

If you have a deadline, you are wise to continue to use Finale, which you are familiar with, to finish the files for that engagement. At the same time, you have arranged for yourself a path forward with a very capable and ever-growing product in Dorico. As you have time, familiarize yourself with the new software and its way of working. You probably did not learn Finale in a day--I know I did not--and Dorico will take some time to adjust. Since you have exercised your option to purchase Dorico at the reduced rate, you have bought yourself some time and are protected for that eventuality when Finale will no longer run on the evolving operating system you now use.