Hello Daniel,
Thank you very much for the update about the new Licensing System! 
Since Dorico 4 is going to be delayed, I hope some improvements, which were not planned for this version will be included, like playback of fermata, ceasura, breath marks. Also some articulations that are still not available as playback in Dorico!
It great Christmas and New Year’s gift if you add such improvements to Dorico 4. We really need them.
Thank you very much in advance!
Best regards,
Thurisaz
Very cool, and congratulations.
Just don’t make the same mistakes that Avid made with Avid Link.
In the meantime, if anyone needs any Steinberg dongles, I have a couple of spares! Call on me.
No, we will not be adding any further features that were not already planned for this release, I’m afraid. I hope that you would be supportive of my colleagues in the Dorico team being able to take some time over the Christmas and New Year period to recharge their batteries and spend time with their families, rather than have to rush to add further new features to the software.
And as Daniel stated above, 2022 will probably look more like previous release cycles. In other words, version 4 will not be the last word by any means. Remember how much functionality was added even in 3.1, if I’m recalling my numbers correctly… and especially 3.5.
Adding last-minute features is a recipe for disaster (been there, done that). I’m perfectly happy using 3.5 over the holiday season.
I find the amount of seeming entitlement that has been expressed here recently to be baffling. Yes of course we are all eager for the new version of software… but I’ve never before seen so many people treat a dev team like they are owed something and are somehow being wronged by delay.
If you purchased any previous version of dorico and it is running correctly on your machine, congratulations: you successfully purchased software and received exactly what you paid for. It was a fair, 1:1 transaction.
but I’ve never before seen so many people treat a dev team like they are owed something and are somehow being wronged by delay.
An unfortunate spirit of our times, one that acts as if products and services, indeed money itself, magically appear, and what “ought to be” is the natural state of things, rather than “what good there is” has been won by great effort at great cost.
That said, it’s good that points of view are shared here that may help the team in their quest for the best possible licensing solution.
I’m sure most of us wish for your team a refreshing holiday, one that will allow them to do their best sort of work when they get back. People broken by constant stress do not do their best work, and we would all suffer the consequences of a Dorico that was not what it could have been.
This doesn’t seem quite fair. No one bought Dorico 1.0 without expecting development to continue. People bought and perhaps still buy Dorico rather than Finale or Sibelius because of its promise (though Dorico has certainly been precocious). A reform of the licensing system was of course signalled from the start…
There are things that I’d like from the versions to come but no reasonable person would expect their every wish to be granted. I think it’s quite remarkable that I, like most people beyond the beta testers, really have no idea what Dorico 4 will bring. I’m excited. There are a few things though that perhaps should be in it and are probably overdue: mainstream refinements that would make a big difference to a lot of people every day. I’m not sure that it’s so unreasonable to feel some frustration that these kind of improvements have been delayed.
The Dorico team has told us that many of the features and improvements that appear in Dorico for iPad will be in Dorico 4, and a few other potential features have been mentioned here or there.
But Daniel has been quite clear that as a matter of policy they do not disclose actual features until release. If they or any other development team did so, they would certainly find themselves overpromising and disappointing their customers, either with features promised that cannot be included due to unexpected difficulties in development, or with features included that are not yet ready for prime time for the same reason.
For those reasons, the beta team is the appropriate place to limit advance news of expected features.
As a customer, I wish it were not so, but also as a customer, I realize that this policy supports the best long-term relationship with Dorico.
You only have to look through this forum to see all the people complaining about the current licensing setup.
Alternatives are not infinite, and almost certainly will involve compromise. A system that works silently, and allows two seats, both of which can be reallocated to need, is better than we have right now.
There is a certain irony in regular forum users posting online about how they might not have internet access every 30 days.
You’ve misunderstood: it’s exciting that so little is known about Dorico 4 beyond the boring stuff (the licensing, M1 etc.). I’ve edited my message to make this clearer.
Lots of people advertise features in advance or have public betas. It does mean though that the launch is then often less of an event.
Anyway, this is wandering too far off topic.
I’m going to switch to the new system as soon as it rolls out, but what I don’t understand is this urge to pretend it’s some kind of an improvement, exciting new chapter. It’s very clearly not an improvement to those users who made peace the dongle for all these years. For them, the new system is a massive downgrade.
It takes a perpetual “forever” hardware license and downgrades it to a monthly software license. De-facto, it’s not a perpetual license anymore not matter what anyone says.
That’s because the new license will stop working after a month unless a user specifically renews it by taking action, such as connecting to internet or enabling a system process for auto-renewal (or, whatever other requirement may be introduced in the future). And it’s obvious that there will be new, more requirements in the future because the license shifts from hardware to software. And that weasel word - “the monthly allowance”, speaks volumes to the real nature of the new system.
Further, the new system either reduces the number of machines that can run the software or it imposes new burdens and new requirements compared to the current system. I am running it on two machines right now and I do not need to remember and bother to activate/deactivate one of them online if I wanted to add a third one.
And finally, this new and exciting chapter has also resulted in the 3- month delay of two major releases. That’s a whole business quarter. And it’s 9 months since the initial announcement (was it March?), so I guess it’s nearly a year-long disruption.
If this sounds ungrateful or entitled to someone, my apologies. I’ve used the dongle since 2008 (still on the original one from back then and I love it). Personally I’m planning to go the “annual allowance” route, as it’s the closest to the current upgrade cycle for those who follow it. And yes I understand that for the very vocal dongle-haters the new system might look slightly more appealing
Hi Daniel,
Thank you for the reply! Yes, I’m always supportive and no doubt that the team deserve to spend time with their families!
I wonder one more thing?! Is already there any significant improvement on the AudioEngine?
I’m having issues with loading and running the BBC SO Pro template. There is some problem related to multi-processor and multi-core (more than 8) computers.
Would be really nice If we can conduct some test with Ulf to check if this is fixed before the official release of Dorico 4.
Best regards,
Thurisaz
Whichever copy protection one prefers (or dislikes least), this marketing (‘A New and Exciting Era Begins at Steinberg’) does seem quite annoying. It’s s Steinberg rather than Dorico thing though and it’s bound to attract some attention. I know nothing about marketing; perhaps it’ll be effective.
Sorry about the misunderstanding. My wife tells me the same thing all the time. 
@dspreadbury Something to consider - why exactly is a minimum number of licenses relevant, as long as it’s >= 2? Nobody would buy two or more licenses unless they are representing a group of some kind, and obviously Steinberg makes money from the multiple purchases.
I suspect it’s in the name you use “Enterprise/Institutional” makes you think of this in terms of big companies and such, but calling it “Enterprise/Institutional/Studio” is equally accurate, and includes us small studios.
Said differently, if you have a lower limit for these groups, and given that no individual user would buy multiple licenses, then those of us that have between 2 and 3 (5, 10 or whatever is arbitrarily picked) are in a no mans land.
No need for a reply, I know you’ve heard me on this issue but clearly this is important to some subset of your users.
I certainly wouldn’t say that. I made peace with the dongle but I’ll eagerly retire it for a system that permits two installs. My machines are connected to the internet, however, so I don’t foresee any issues. For me this seems a massive upgrade.
I do have a technical concern with such a system. At my work, we bought a “perpetual” license for other software that “phones home” to check that the license is still valid - however, some months ago it stopped working. For security reasons, they changed their activation website to only allow the latest TLS version to connect. The older program version that we had did not support the latest TLS version, and so it became impossible to activate unless we paid to upgrade it to a version that did support the newest TLS. Although the latest TLS version is in wide use currently, I could see this happening in the future again if it is supplanted by another newer TLS version.
This may not affect me as I would plan to upgrade Dorico regardless to the newest version, but I am wondering whether “Steinberg Licensing” will be a separate thing from Dorico and Cubase, its own installer like the eLicenser. If it is separate, then it would theoretically be possible to upgrade the “Steinberg Licensing” for free without having to pay for a Dorico upgrade in the event of a TLS update becoming necessary. If on the other hand it is built into Dorico as a component, then when a Dorico version stops receiving updates, the “Steinberg Licensing” component could stop receiving updates. I imagine probably it will be a separate thing, but just wanted to confirm.
If you read the announcement carefully, you’ll notice that it’s a separate program that gets installed alongside dorico as a part of the dorico installation package.