"I so badly want to take that as a good sign that Poser is finally going to see Studio for what it is... the competition, not a partner."

Dont you mean poser users like yourself. :-)

Daz studio will truly never be "the competition" because

it is freeware.

thus I am not sure why you think this would be relevant news

to Daz users any more so than the hiring of a new product manager at Autodesk.

Because many DAZ users also use Poser so yeah, they might be interested. And no, Studio is definitely the competition. Admittedly, I could also argue that DAZ itself is the competition because nothing they have done since before Genesis came out has been to the benefit of Poser. I'm hoping that SM now realizes that and will move to correct the situation of full dependence on third parties for content.