Poser was first released in 1995 and has changed hands several times before ending up with Smith Micro.  DAZ got its start selling content for Poser.  Sometime in the mid 00s DAZ apparently became worried about the future of Poser. There apparently were questions of whether the company that currently owned it would continue to develop it. DAZ was totally depend upon Poser for their sales.

In 2005 DAZ acquired Eovia, which owned Carrara and Hexagon. It was also in 2005 that DAZ released version 1.0 of DAZ Studio. This was apparently an insurance policy against Poser disappearing from the market.

Poser was eventually bought by Smith Micro and they have done a good job of enhancing and supporting Poser.  There is now little danger of Poser disapearing.

DAZ has gone ahead with developing DAZ Studio anyway. DAZ Studio was not always free. I believe early on there was a free version and not free Pro version. For the last few years DAZ has made the Pro version free, so there is no longer a non-Pro version. DAZ could go back to charging something for DAZ Studio in the future. Time will tell.

When DAZ developed Genesis (1) they were using several new bits of technology, like weight mapping, that were not available in Poser. They enhanced DS to have weight mapping. Smith Micro also added weight mapping support into Poser, but the two implementations of weight mapping are incompabible.  DAZ chose to support Genesis in Poser by creating the DSON library that adds support for DAZ weight mapping in Poser.  This means that Genesis clothes will interoperate betwen DS and Poser aside from materials.

The developers of Dawn at Hivewire picked a different technique. Dawn is one shape between DS and Poser, but Dawn uses Poser native weight mapping in Poser and DAZ native weight mapping in DS.  For Victoria 4.2 there is one figure that works in DS and Poser.  For Genesis there is one figure that operates in DS and in Poser through the DSON importer (note: many Poser users are distatisfied with the DSON importer because of bugs or performance). For Dawn, the Poser and DS version are really different figures.

The lack of a auto fit for Dawn in DAZ Studio is because DAZ owns the copyright on the Victoria 4.2 shape. Hivewire cannot create a Victoria 4.2 autofit clone without using that shape. If you own Victoria 4.2, you can create a auto fit clone for your personal use, but you cannot sell it. DAZ also cannot make a Dawn auto fit clone for Genesis, because Hivewire owns the Dawn shape.

Users of DS already have access to weight mapped figures in Genesis 1/2. There is a weight mapped Victoria 4.2 addon that uses native Poser weight mapping and does not work in DS. It is available free at RuntimeDNA, but has never taken off.  Dawn was an attempt to provide a character that supports native weight mapping technology in DS and Poser.  The result is a character that is less compatible between DS and Poser than either Victoria 4.2 or Genesis as far a clothes. PA have to do two versions of clothing, one for Poser and one for DS, as well as different materials for Poser and DS.  Hivewire encourages PAs to do both Poser and DS versions, but in the end PAs will do what is in their financial interest.

I helped crash the Hivewire site the night Dawn was released (Hivewire site actually crashed when I submitted my order. I never got the confirmation page, but the order had gone through when the site came back up.)  I bought most of the Dawn clothing I could find in the early days that would work in DS. Even then much of clothing was Poser only.  I did try to create a V4 auto fit clone. Never got it perfect, but that was before the tutorial.

I gave up on Dawn not because of a lack of clothes, but because I was just not happy about her renders. That is a completely personal judgement, but I decided to concentrate on Genesis 2, because I was happier with the results.