When will Reaktor7 come?

You make a reasonable point. Still it doesn't really curb my own self doubts much. I really have to take the approach of "wait and see" while I just avoid using it on any significant projects until I've had official word.

I don't see them ever abandoning Reaktor, they have far too many products relying on it. Most expansions have presets for reaktor instruments and Maschine relies heavily on it. Just because they have prioritized development on other platforms it doesn't mean Reaktor is abandoned, I think they will maintain it for a long time…

Every node added to Alpha Forever in the last 2 years was built in Alpha Forever first (even the filters) and was prototyped there (I used these nodes in my music, and replaced them when they got compiled). The only difference to the compiled version is CPU usage (this makes a huge difference).

So is this compilation process something that is part of the app, or is it a hidden thing that only the devs have access to?

Is there an open source API for 3rd party users to build their own optimised DSP objects in C++ and use them in the structure?

Without access to optimised low level coding, it is useless to me. Reaktor provides that with core.

Is that embedded in the app?

Reaktor is one of the GOATs, all because of the amazing user library. What a sad day it would be to see NI abandon the 20+ years of customer investment, and the thousands of awesome and bizarre devices that were born from it. I would be overjoyed if they simply added a few quality of life updates: better search function and library management, automatic stereo connections, a “replace” feature to easily swap instruments and macros, etc. But the blind pursuit of profit and growth seems to be pushing NI into the production of smut.

Correct. They will bugfix it the same way they do FM8 and Massive, for these same reasons, and maintain compatibility with new OSes.

REAKTOR is in maintenance mode, and kept around because a lot of their content depends on it.

If that wasn't the case, I'm pretty confident they would have discontinued REAKTOR, MASSIVE and FM8 along with Absynth 5.

They've basically stopped developing REAKTOR Ensembles and now develop Play Series libraries for KONTAKT, instead.

REAKTOR is more of a development tool than a production tool. It is like giving someone MATLAB when they ask for a Graphing Calculator.

I think these tools are great when integrated and used as a means of developing devices for and extending the functionality of DAWs - as is done with Ableton Live (Max4Live) and Bitwig Studio (The Grid). It's a weird placement for a standalone product, though.

Most people looking into REAKTOR are probably looking for something more along the lines of HALion or Falcon, so they don't give it much attention after they realize what it is.

REAKTOR Blocks was an attempt to shift that, but it never really took off (nor did their attempts to build a commercial NKS ecosystem on top of it with 3rd party developers).

I feel like REAKTOR 6 was a real last ditch effort to build ecosystem around the product to justify further development. When that didn't happen, it was put on ice - and remains so.