Here’s the background…
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Cockos Reaper still has that business model. They have a $60 license for home use, and $225 for commercial. That is good for two full version, which is roughly 5 years. Aside from a 5 second nagging screen, they have no technical software protection system. The illegal version (i.e., not paid for) has the same functionality as the $225 license for commercial users.
I find it hard to believe that that is an actual thing for Steinberg.
Internet fraudsters stealing credit card information, to buy a license for Dorico or Cubase?
That just seems pretty far out.
In the meantime, and regardless how the licensing thing is going to work out, I guess the fallback scenario is to keep a copy of Dorico 3.5 and a dongle on your computer, so at least you can keep working until your ET phone home problem has been solved. That is, assuming that Dorico 4 files can be opened in Dorico 3.5. That is not a given (at least not with Sibelius).
You shouldn’t find it far out. It happens all the time. In tons of countries, a Dorico license will set you back a couple months average salary.
It’s much easier to download a list of card numbers and start shopping. I imagine Steinberg suffers from this a lot more than we do, given their products are mass-market.
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At the back of my mind is always the dislike of renting things. When I buy a book, I can keep it, and its survival is not dependent upon the company being still in business. (Thank God for that and for the fact that we can access almost any book that was ever published since the 16th century, due to having libraries.)
If I buy a pencil, a bicycle or a car, the same is true: the company may have gone bust, but I can still use them until they falls to bits and are irreparable.
I wonder how long software, or computing hardware, will have built in obsolescence. I hope we are just living throught a period of change and that, just like pencils, cars and bicycles, one day they will all work and follow the same conventions. (E.g. brake and accelerator in the same place, or, in terms of software, the same shortcuts for the same functions.)
After 40 years of largely cosmetic operating system changes (CP/M, DOS, NextStep, MACOS, iOS, iPadOs, Windows n-m, etc) I am very weary of this whole computer thing!
But maybe it is just the long term effect of the dystopian time we have been living in for the past nearly two years.
David
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We have clay tablets from 5000 years ago, which we can read, but the first email message is lost to civilization.
Software isn’t like a book or a car: it’s like fruit. You can keep it in a fridge, but it’s going to go off one day.
Software is a set of instructions for a very particular environment. And that environment is constantly changing. Yes, you can maintain vintage hardware to keep it running; or create a virtual emulation of an old computer’s status, in a more powerful, newer one. But things like security certificates that expire or can be turned off will pose a problem for future retro-hobbyists.
MacOS Monterey still comes with python2, and I like the fact that the same scripts will work on an M1 Mac and a PowerPC running Leopard. But that won’t last forever.
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This is all pretty much true, but some software will stay relatively fresh longer than other software.
Just because something won’t last forever, doesn’t mean we should kill it immediately.
It’s really only changes to the underlying OS that tend to cause problems, and though I can only talk about Windows with any experience, Microsoft tends to put some effort into not breaking stuff, especially software that runs entirely in user mode (as opposed to kernel mode).
It should be up to the customer how long, and what they are prepared to do to keep running something they bought, rather than have their heart-plug ripped out by some corporate Harkonen overlord 
When we introduced activation in 2004, we had to make promises to key distribution partners that if we ever were to turn off our activation servers, we would release a version prior to that which didn’t require activation. In fact, it’s hard to know whether activation was a good thing overall or not for revenues. Piracy in some ways adds value to your product. People make websites about it because it’s freely available. Activation allows us to get some great metrics, and we can see how many free vs trial vs paid licenses are in active use. In the end, there are free products available. Any user of free software has a non-zero chance of eventually paying one day. The question is whether to take that chance, or give it to your competitors. So the market for free software is actually quite competitive. I imagine with the changes MuseScore is announcing and flashing at us with the nightly builds of 4.0, it will get tougher and tougher to justify paying the high prices for something like Dorico or Sibelius.
Frankly (and I know it’s a risky strategy, and easy for me to say from behind my keyboard) I think Steinberg would make more money in the end by making it a lot easier to pirate Dorico. The more people using it by whatever means, the more people they talk to about it, the more it shows up in websites, instructional videos on youtube, the more organic brand collateral you get. This brand collateral brings in sales.
The other way to build resilience in the marketplace is to build an ecosystem where other products depend on your product as a platform. For example if you have a great API / SDK for extensions to your product, and you can convince other software developers that your product would be a good platform for them to make money in by offering a plugin that can provide some interesting added-value, then you are effectively recruiting evangelists for your product, extending your marketing department, and extending your customer base.
It’s going to be very interesting over the next year or so.
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Since you are advocating for piracy, I don’t think Steinberg will opt for your suggestion.
But I am sure that before the Harkonen invasion or asteroid showers Steinberg will have come up with another licensing plan to cover additional possibilities–unless Space Aliens kidnap the programming team. 
Well Space Aliens Did TRY to kidnap the programming team, but they escaped with the help of some earth types from Germany.
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I am desperately trying, but failing, to think of a remunerative sales model that would work for Steinberg, without needing the policing of licences, such as Gilette use for their razors, whereby they sell the razor at cost, and make all the profits from selling blades.
David
I’m not advocating for piracy. Too much piracy is clearly a problem, but also so is too much pain for paid users to stamp out the last 0.01% of piracy. There has to be a balance somewhere, and an idea of how much pain is too much pain. Time will tell. I feel sorry for people without internet access. was talking with one last night.
I am curiosity. What kind user is who has no Internet?
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The guy I was talking to last night had an iPad he used for anything that required a connection, but was too afraid of being able to properly secure a PC that was internet-connected. He’s retired, and had an IT support person all his working life, and so never learned that much about PCs, let alone PC security.
Another lady on the FB groups lives in a location with no internet access, and has to physically transport her computer to another location to install updates.
These are people too. There can be a myriad reasons why someone doesn’t have any access at all, but the main problems here I think will be people who have intermittent problems, and outages at Steinberg’s end since it’s impossible to completely avoid them longer term.
But they can make a 1 year license, which it says in the FAQ
Can I use Steinberg products on systems that are not connected to the internet at all?
We know that some customers prefer to run their studio machines offline, or that for specific projects it may be required for legal or contractual reasons not to connect to the internet for the duration of the project. To meet these requirements, we will shortly be introducing a process of activating a license for a period of one year, so that the computer can remain disconnected from the internet for that entire period and the software will continue to operate as normal.
They are distinguished by where they live. There are people in the USA, and Europe, including the UK, who have none or very unreliable or slow internet access. This is, of course, because the ISPs do not consider it financially worth their while to provide them decent access to what has become a necessity of life.
That is without considering Africa and other benighted areas.
David
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OT: I like the quote, but according to Quote Investigator, “there is no substantive evidence currently that Mark Twain wrote or spoke this statement.”
Nobody on here at least
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What I object to, is the idea that people without internet seem to somehow deserve to have their license taken off them.
but me I do not think it function in that way. but a person who wants Dorico can go online one day and license keeps for one year.
How are people without internet going to load the program to begin with?
You seem to want to move the goal posts so you can continue to complain.
By all means, go for it.
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