"Until [the format war]'s settled, people are reluctant to commit." That favors CL and Poser because people are reluctant to abandon the format they have for another till they have to. DAZ has an advantage with DS being free because they don't have to sell the software for people to try anything new. Since DAZ is primarily a content provider, they can release new models for it faster and a new rigged model will probably be free to test drive with DS as V3 and M3 are now free. If I can take as a given that DS can be matured to be at least as good a renderer as Poser 6 (or whichever version is around in the near future), DAZ will probably win the advanced rigging format wars and become the dominant posing software maker because they can reach customers, faster than CL, can with updates. CL is tied to an update of Poser and it'll cost $200 to try it without restrictions. DAZ can let customers try it for free and produce rendered images without any limitations on a real, not trial version of DS. I don't care who wins. Right now, CL has the advantage because they've got a mature tested program on the marketplace. DAZ is trying to play catchup with DS. Once DS is on some par level with Poser, DAZ will take the lead because they have a strong content base to work from. I can't picture a community programmed free version competing in the mix. Look how long it's taking DAZ with dedicated programmers to do the job. It's hard to compete with what will in some capacity remain a free program. Besides, look at how often some errant member of the Poser community spits at a freebie provider for not doing what they want or not wholly living up to their expectations. Who wants to spend years of their life working on a Poser alternative and have to deal community members that don't think they're doing it fast enough or doing it right? Whichever future rigging format wins will be downward compatible with current Poser content because nobody is going to support a new format that makes their current runtime libraries useless. It doesn't matter which future format wins because it will be better than what we have now and we'll probably have what we currently have for a good long time. Somehow, it just doesn't seem like something that ought to worry me greatly.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon