"It handles radiosity much better"

My mistake, it seems that recently POV has added a form of photon mapping and that is something that as far as I know Firefly doesn't have.

But I wouldn't trade that for the lack of micro poly displacement (POV doesn't mention it, but then there isn't a complete feature list I can find on the website). I can simulate radiosity easily enough... but displacement mapping is too cool to live without these days.

"It's probably the most versatile and powerful rendering engine available."

Surely you meant to qualify that with the words "free and open source" (even that isn't something I would grant with total ease). Clearly POV, while cool,  isn't really in the same league in either features or speed as the big engines (Renderman, Mental Ray, Brazil, VRay and so on).

I think you are confusing the engine and the interface. With the exception of Radiosity, I don't know a single feature POV supports that Firefly lacks.. and I know of at least one that apparently POV doesn't have that Firefly does. It's pretty much a toss up.

If you don't like the lighting in Poser that's certainly understandable - but don't think POV is the answer, because it isn't the rendering engine that is the problem. Slapping POV ray into it isn't going to change anything as very few Poser users will be bothered (nor should they) hand coding a scene.

While I am sure a Poser->POV converter is cool and interesting and useful, I just don't see it as something CL should spend their time on when they have both Firefly and potentially the excellent Shade renderers available to them.