Steinberg must allow the Dorico team the resources to allow Dorico to open Finale files directly

[benwiggy]

@jeffrags

MakeMusic’s one-year window is heinous in this regard.

Existing installations will continue to work beyond August 2025.

Michael Good (the inventor of MusicXML and former MakeMusic VicePresident) has explained the problem here:

Crossgrade from Finale to Dorico Pro - more Questions

You don’t actually want that. Finale files contain less formatting information that MusicXML files. Much of how Finale displays music is computed in the program, not stored in the file. MusicXML on the other hand saves all this information. Dorico discards much of it by default, but you can change that by going to Dorico > Preferences > MusicXML Import and turning on the options to preserve formatting.

Unless Dorico actually became Finale, it’s not going to be able to open Finale files directly.