Quote - > Quote - It seems very likely to me that you've never participated in a large scale software rollout.  "Many, many" companies simply do not operate that way.  They either develop and software with existing staff, which means that staff is fully utilized while this goes on, or they hire short term labor for the development effort and fire them when done.  The latter is more common for isolated development efforts, but this is a moderate extension of Poser 7, so it'd be madness to use outside staff for that.  Possibly to supplement existing staff, but even then there'd be training time required.  Producing commercial software is not something you do on a casual basis, it's full time work.

 

That's all well and good -- but it's pretty much irrelevant to what we're talking about.  You seem to be operating under the assumption that the release of a new software package automatically means the denegration of service on other existing software packages which are produced by the same company. 

Umm, it's not irrelevant. Lookit - say you're a software company. You have x number of programmers in your corral. Each programmer (if they're actually worth a damn) is going to cost you roughly $30-$50/hr in labor, with your top codemonkeys and architects costing you $60/hr (or more... very often more). Assuming you have one architect and three codemonkeys on Project #1 (being the size and complxity of Poser), and they take 18 months to build it from scratch, you paid out at least $450,000 in labor alone. This isn't counting the rough $20,000 - $30,000 in equipment, software licensing fees, etc. A new project can cost the same in addition if it has a completely different codebase, or a percentage thereof if it uses the same codebase. Either way, each new codemonkey still comes in at $30-$50/hr, and comes with lag-time while each gets up to snuff. Now with your company, you go from one product to two. The first is still constantly evolving, so you need at least 50-75% of your staff to keep going on that after it launches. Product #2 means you have to hire more people. If you cannot afford to do that, it won't get built (especially if Product #2 is just as complex and has a different codebase). Each new person you hire will take roughly 2-6 months (depending) to get up to speed on your codebase, methods, standards, design specs, etc. This means you still have a deficiency of talent, no matter which route you take. Therefore, you get to prioritize. You leave a couple of folks on Product #1 in maintenance mode (bug fixes, etc), while you concentrate on #2. Now granted that "Poser Pro" is essentially the same codebase as "Poser", so it isn't as large a split, but it still means a division of labor. It also means one other question: Which do you focus on the most? Where does your company's future lie? Which market do you bet the farm on if they differ and budgets get tight? > Quote - I submit that several SR's for P7 being rolled out at the same time that "Poser Pro" (if that's what they'll call it) was clearly under development is a strong indication that e-frontier has by no means 'abandoned' their P7 user base.

I will allow that they haven't - yet- but only insofar that the two are essentially the same codebase. That said, the more differentiation there is/becomes, the bigger the division of labor between the two, and there is still the overall company focus on which market it wants to court the most. /P