it may affect carrara if smith changes e-f's policy about the poser sdk and about co-operating with other software makers. I had expected daz to purchase poser during the time when e-f was developing P7, but daz bought carrara instead. perhaps e-f was asking too much for the software back then. it's the normal practice for a new company to buy poser around the time of each new version release. but if sales were only $7M vs. purchase price of $6M, this doesn't leave much money for smith to patch up the P8 beat, hence they'll likely be looking for a buyer around the time P9 is expected IMVHO.