Marque - "I have said that if I can get some kind of assurance that I will be able to use the upgrade from CL if they go under, (i.e. a patch to unlock the program so I can continue to use it if they are gone), then I will probably upgrade it." Hate to say it, but if they make such a formal statement it's still an empty promise. Think about it...what is "going under" and who determines that it happened? Let's say that Curious Labs lays off 24 people and all that's left is the owner, has it gone under? The owner will certainly want to try to sell it and if a "crack" was released the value of the program would have greatly diminished. Okay, you wait 1 month, then 2. Your hard drive dies and you get a new one. You can't contact anyone to get a new registration number (yeah, the owner is going to hang around answering phones). How long do we wait for the owner to decide that the program cannot be sold? Another scenerio. Let's say for the sake of argument that another MetaC program ... Painter3D has "gone under". If there had been a similar arrangement back then who would be responsible for providing the "crack", MetaC, Curious, Adobe? If an employee of any one of those did it they would find themselves in court and possibly jail. So when CL goes out who's going to do it? (by the way, in my view there are two kinds of businesses, those out of business and those that are going that way ... however, slowly (e.g. Pan American Airlines, Montgomery Ward, Commodore...) If the "crack" was put "in escrow" with some lawyer with specific instructions that the Poser community understood about what would have to happen to have the "crack" released, well then maybe you could trust that it would occur. In the end I'm not worried about CL going out of business. When they do the hacker/Warez people having done their thing will have provided us with the "crack". Hmmm where was that Warez address...I had it here somewhere...