I’ve been following Daniel’s blog for some time and am really excited by the design and thinking that has gone on to develop Dorico. I’m not a professional musician, but as an amateur involved with various groups, often find a need for a notation program. I’ve tried many free offerings and the big ones as well over the years.
My one concern is the Steinberg licensing system. It seems a real burden. I’ve failed to activate the trial Cubase Elements 8 and fear that I’ll have the same problems with Dorico. I’m reluctant to spend big money when there seem to be so many people have problems with the licensing system. I fully appreciate the need for licensing, but the implementation seems very clunky, clumsy and a real barrier to even trying out software.
Stephen, it is true that a very small percentage of users who attempt to activate a product using our soft-eLicenser encounter problems. I think this is probably inevitable with any kind of non-trivial software license management solution.
However, our eLicenser team are aware of this problem and even as I type this they are working on a thorough diagnosis of the nature of these problems and are working on mitigation steps to reduce as far as is possible the likelihood that customers will encounter problems with activation by the time Dorico is released.
Tens of thousands of people use eLicenser with Steinberg and VSL products every day without any issues. There’s nothing clunky about it, and it’s not a burden.
My limited experience with using the USB-eLicenser has been very positive. I admittedly have only recently started using Cubase, but don’t find the use of singles as burdensome as some seem to.