The relative costs of other programmes are not the issue for those of us who already have - and professionally use - Sibelius, which I've done since the mid 1990's, so I have decades of work invested in it. That's not just money but my time and energy too. I run a small publishing company which depends on it, and the Sibelius programme handles a lot of fairly complicated and unusual things which I need and which are not generally in mainstream use. I don't consider myself less virtuous for having an expensive programme to do what I require. Which is the whiff I'm getting.

And as for feeling sorry for Avid: they are pursuing an unnecessarily destructive practice. They could sell Sibelius back to the Finns if the market has really dried up (which I don't believe it has). Sib is/was the industry standard. That does *not* make it a Bad Guy.

My concern in starting this thread is to try to learn and gather as much information as possible as to what is actually happening, and if possible to rally some support among interested parties - i.e. existing users - in case that action-group website can actually focus itself to accomplish something. Hearing about all the cheap programmes out there which are perfectly satisfactory to many people's requirements is really neither here nor there.