This whole thread reminds me a bit of the old zen tale about the farmer. His horse runs off and all his neighbors say "What terrible luck you have!" His only reply is "Maybe."

Then the horse comes back, bringing two wild horses with it. The neighbors say "What terriffic luck you have!" "Maybe." Then his son tries to ride one of the wild horses, is thrown and breaks his leg. The neighbors commiserate: "A broken leg, and harvest just around the corner. Terrible luck!" "Maybe." The next day the army sweeps through the village, drafting all the young men and taking them off to war. The farmer's son is left behind, though, because of his broken leg. "WHAT AMAZING LUCK!" the neighbors say...

You get the idea.

Does DAZ want to kill Poser? Well, any company tries to dominate its market, and then branch out into other markets. It's what capitalist corporations DO. Complain if you want, but it's like complaining that sharks don't give serious enough consideration to the vegetarian option. Eliminating the competition must be somewhere on DAZ's radar, and I think everybody knows this although of course DAZ can't just come right out and say so. It does make their "we love Poser too" rhetoric seem a bit empty. On the other hand, Poser and its users currently are a large chunk of their revenue stream, so it's not an out-and-out lie either.

Besides, it's not like DAZ can slip up behind Poser and garrotte it with a piano wire. If they kill Poser, it will be through competition, which is supposedly good for the marketplace. (Hey, isn't that us?!) For DAZ to kill Poser, they will have to offer an alternative that matches or bests Poser's feature set and price point. They will also have to beat out eFrontier on the "intangibles": customer service, licensing, community and vendor support. There are a lot of factors in play. At every turn, eFrontier has the chance to counter them. If they can't or won't, DAZ will win the hearts and minds of the lion's share of Poser's user base, and Poser will shrivel.

But IF that happens (eventually, some day, years form now) it will be eFrontier's fault as much as DAZ's. And if it happens, why stay "true" to Poser when there is a cheaper, better alternative from a company that provides better service and value? (Poser isn't the Mets, for crying out loud!) No one would mourn the passing of Poser under those circumstances, unless they have some kind of personal axe to grind with DAZ, suffer from chronic acute software nostalgia, or just generally hate the winner for whatever reason.

Yes, companies who dominate markets then tend to mistake their customers for urinals, but realistically I can't see DAZ (or any company in this space) coming to that point. Too much competition from above, with high-end 3D software coming down in price and new innovations in 3D arriving regularly. Also too much competition from below, with increasingly sophisticated open source and freeware 3D tools. And people in this market segment are used to mixing and matching - a modeller here, a UV mapper there. The kind of lock-in Microsoft has with their Office software is likely impossible to achieve in our little niche.

So is this acquisition bad news for Poser? Maybe.

• Jimdoria  ~@>@