I am wondernig whehter the incoming Dorico update (at the end of 2017) is a paid update or a free update.
('cause Cubase and Wavelab offers annual paid updates in at least recent 6 years.)
Note: I own two Dorico licenses. I mainly use Dorico for my composition now. I am still going to update them anyway whether this update is paid or not. I just need to prepare my money if I know this update is not free.
The upcoming update is expected to be the last substantial free update of the Dorico 1.x series (this does no necessarily preclude a minor bug fix afterwards) but the next substantial update after the upcoming one is expected to be a “fairly priced” update. Of course all things not officially released are subject to change.
-T
Daniel already answered you here.
https://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=246&t=118741&p=687025#p687025
The upcoming update is expected to be the last substantial free update of the Dorico 1.x series
Which makes me wonder…
I was planning on buying Dorico after the forthcoming update. Since I need percussion writing, this will be the first time Dorico will be usable for me - and it makes for a pretty nice christmas present for myself 
But now I’m hesitating. If the next update after this one will again cost me money, do I really want to buy Dorico now, only to spend money again a few months later…?
I, for one, would expect a substantial update to take a while longer to drop, but this is just guessing. We’ll have to wait and see how the team will communicate afterwards.
Well, it took them only 6 months to go from 1.1 that arrived in June and brought us chord symbols and repeat endings to 1.2 which I expect to arrive in December. That’s why I came up wich “a few months later”.
But you are right: Let’s wait and see what they will have to tell us 
If I were to speculate, without any useful information about what comes after this year’s last update, there will be some kind of update in the spring of 2018 which will have at least some compelling feature-function. I base this purely on the idea that Steinberg released Dorico 1.0 in October of 2016, and from a financial model, Steinberg’s renewing products in the $400-$600 range typical see an update every 18 months (or sooner to) see a cash infusion into the expense pipeline for the product. Given that they will have gone for more than a year without a substantial cash infusion from the product base, I think they will be pretty anxious to see some renewed revenue; however, to assure that people actually purchase the update, there will need to be something reasonably important to assure the majority of the base purchases the update.
There are certainly several technical/functional avenues to make this update happen in the spring-summer timeframe. Plugin language, more extensive composition tools, more extensive graphics/glyph editing, real-time midi transcription, improved DAW exchange, playback improvements, sound library improvements, Noteperformer support, and the like. Any of these could justify at least a modest ($60-$80) upgrade fee and several at once might justify $100 or more.
More far-out stuff like handwriting/pen transcription (a la Staffpad), ipad tools, or cloud sharing is probably not in the center path as they have made little indication they are pursuing these avenues.
For myself, I’ll just keep following along with Daniel’s blog and what interviews he gives this winter. The future will reveal itself soon enough.