Hi.
I have a question.

Poser 6 is Curious company.
Poser 7 is efrontier company.
And, Poser Pro is Smith Micro company.
Are they same?
Do you know why there are change?
Could you answer me?
Please...

curious labs were sold to E-frontier who were then sold to Smith Micro.

Just normal business buying I think

Each one was bought out by the next, Curious labs became e-frontier and e-frontier was bought by Smith Micro, so now the owners of Poser 6, 7 and Pro in reality is Smith Micro, hope that answers your question!

LOL X-Post!!

I see.
Thank you.
I wonder why they are changed.
I think that Poser is not popular?
The company of Poser is perished?
Why?
I like poser.
And I wish the company of poser would be growth.
Anyway, Thank you.

smalll - there is no need to worry. None of the companies that owned Poser "perished". They were just bought by another company. The people who worked for the first company then worked for the new company. In simple terms, it was just a change of company name.

The companies were taken over not because they were failing, but because they were quite successful and had a large, loyal user community, which is valuable.

It is quite normal for a relatively small company with a lot of loyal customers to be bought out by, and merged into, a larger company like this. In general, the new company commits to maintaining and developing the software in order to keep those customers happy and loyal.

The software that we use to run our business has been bought out by four different companies in five years.

(Others will no doubt want to "correct" some things I have said here - but guys, bear in mind I'm just trying to keep it simple, okay?)

For a product like Poser its business behaves like a swing.
A large loyal user base is attractive enough to entice large companies to buy it but then it doesn't develop in the way they had hoped so they want to get rid of it again. The original developers still believe in the product so they take it over in a management buyout. The this new small company finds the going hard so they are looking for capital. And the circle is closed we start over again.
The problem with niche products is that they require a lot of capital to keep going and develop new releases but money only comes in in leaps and bounds (with the new release). This makes it very hard to properly manage the cash flow. The large user base and the profits with a new release are interesting for large companies but these require a steady return on investment to keep going and a product like Poser might not return the big money between releases (which can be years apart). So whenever the big company needs to improve their baseline they look for their historically weak products and tries to dump them (traditionally Poser being one of those weak products). After a lot of arm wrestling someone take the product over, releases a new version, makes enough to pay for the product and runs out of money 1 or 2 years later (generally shortly before the next new version).

Most of the people working on Poser back in the Curious Labs days are still working on it now, nothing really changed but the people at the very top.

Yep, and an influx of new investment dollars.. ;)

lol- don't forget Metacreations :)

I will say that overall customer support and participation has dwindled more and more with each acquisition. With Metacreations the developers were in the Poser community and we all had a lot to say of what was put in the next version. Perhaps now, its just some elite few that are partciipating, not the general users and hobbyists as much, at least from what I see hanging around the groups.
Smith Micro seems to have fallen off the map as far as customer service.

Smalll -

Now, Smith Micro owns Poser Pro, 7, 6, 5, 4 and Poser Artist.