Quote - And I think the basic thinking amongst the Poser coders is to give us, the user, options.

Options, I have no problems with. Options presented without common sense, let alone intelligence? Now that's a problem, and it leads to features that simply don't get used.

Quote - They've never been a content provider; they are tool providers.

...whch puts them at the mercy of the main (and biggest) content provider engine of all. DAZ got spooked into changing its strategic thinking back in 2002, and I suspect that Poser will get its own forced epiphany as time goes on.

If you want to survive long term, going vertical is going to be your best bet. Relying on one external company (and no others) to provide you with a living is a great way to kill your company.

 

Quote - But Poser has always been a 'Here's the tools we came up with. You can read the files. What can you do?' kind of company; and the community responded.

10 years ago, folks were exploring the limits and pushing into some rather neat territory. Nowadays, a few folks are still doing that, but the vast majority just want their pretty kids, faeries, and bewbage. 

Quote - We have 12+ years of content that can be retrofitted and brought up to useable by modern standards once again.

Yup - and it's mixed in with 12+ years of unusable garbage. 

Don't get me wrong, I like the idealism you're presenting, but the cold hard reality is, there's a reason why most of the promising up-and-comers (as well as nearly every Poser default figure built after Posette and Dork) have failed miserably, and until those shortcomings are addressed and removed, you're going to be stuck floundering in the ever-fading past...