I can’t read the mind of Don Williams and the other developers who are currently working on the next release of Encore/Master Tracks Pro, but as a professional software developer for more than 25 years, I can guess a bit what they are up against.

I have been using software from this family of products since MusicTime 16 for Windows 3.1. I then bought music@passport because it was Passport’s first native Windows 95 version, and I was waiting for MusicTime Deluxe/Rhapsody/Encore to make that transition too when Coda came along and offered a killer competitive upgrade price for Finale, which I went for because it wasn’t clear if Passport was going to ever release that new version of Encore and because “that’s what everybody else was using.” It made it easier to exchange files with others, but I didn’t really like using it.

As a developer who’s written code that had to migrate from 16 bit Windows, to 32 bit Windows, and then to 64 bit Windows, I know that it isn’t as simple as upgrading to the latest version of Windows and the latest build tools and just recompiling everything. And when you consider that a music program deals drivers for MIDI and all the various sound APIs that have existed and then been deprecated over the years, that just multiplies all the various parts that have to be decoupled and reimplemented. You could even see back in 2001-ish that Passport was taking a long time bring Encore over to Windows 98 and Windows NT/2000 compatibility.

Upgrading Encore 5 to Encore 6 is a major undertaking. There must be a ton of work just to maintain feature parity. And with all the progress made by the other products out there, mere feature parity is going to leave out features that seem like they ought to be standard by now.

So here’s my plea on behalf of your loyal Encore customers. If you really have a realistic chance of getting Encore 6 ready and out the door as a product, then great, go for it. But, if you’re really struggling to put in the necessary time and resources to actually finish it, then please consider open sourcing what you’ve got and allowing the community of developers out there to help turn what you’ve done so far into something people can start using.