I said before, I think DAZ saw Bryce as a cash cow and a way to compete with poser. Now they realise that development of the software is taking too long and costing too much. Patience is running out with the older user base, I see many people jumping ship to Vue, because it's going places and is considered industry standard in some respects.
Hopefully by going open source things can get moving again. DAZ promised so much and delivered very little. I don't blame them directly, I just think they got carried away with the euphoria that was in the community once we found out Bryce was saved. They certainly went in the right direction to start with, talking with the original programmers, but the longer we waited for a new version the more the feeling was they had bitten off more than they could chew. From some of those comments above looks like they are finally admitting it.

http://joevinton.blogspot.com/