it evolved from a rudimentary program running on an apple ][ (v.0), to a program for posing a virtual version of an artist's wooden mannequin (v.1), to a program with some rudimentary human-like figures in addition to the mannequin (v.2), to a program (v.3) with some less rudimentary human-like figures and awful plastic wigs (dork and posette), to a version (4) with morphs, magnets, grouping tools, clothing, hair, an expanded number of more human-like models, etc. at this point it changed slighly into ProPak (a precursor of the present-day Poser Artist). version 5, however, was a major evolutionary step, as it brought poser into the realm of real 3D renderers like Max and Carrara, albeit still several years behind the curve. v.6 is still not for modelling, but has a few added features as well as expanded rendering and shading functions, much to the delight of 3D geeks, who had been demanding these features for many years, given that the Poser 4 renderer was hopelessly crude compared to most other 3D rendering software. through this time it was owned by various entities: ghost effects, fractal, metacreations, curious labs, e-frontier et al.