Why should it be Daz3D's responsibility to cripple their products to keep compatibility with a system that refuses to modernise? When the Platform creators absolutely flat out refuse to collaborate to that end. And at Daz3D's expense of offering a broader support base to the wider industry as a whole. 

Ahh now you are on to something. Daz is better run for profit than SM without a doubt, they have decided to dump backwards compatibility and thrust forward with their "industry standard". Good now thats out the way. Are you happy that you have to dump your investment in V6 for V7 so that you can use this new standard and enjoy the bountiful plethora of content that is totally free?

No one had to dump anything to use V7. You can still use V6 or lower. You can use V6's clothing on V7. I've transferred morphs from V6 to V7. Skins won't work, but then most of the time I rather not use textures from previous generations due to stretching from changes in mesh. I'm curious why this of concern since V4 can't do any of that in Poser. V4 can't do much that Genesis does so well, hence the threads, because V4 is all you have or really have known.  SM really hasn't innovated in years, offering conversion tools because they recognize that no one is making current content for figures using their tech so you need ways of borrowing other figure's content. And if you want to pay SM for the an overpriced converter, that's really your choice.  But I don't understand why you are in the DAZ forum trying to justify SM's lack of innovation and projecting that on DAZ like it's their fault. You probably need to reevaluate that, because in the scheme of things, it doesn't matter. It's a dead horse, and it's been dead for some time. To be honest, no one really cares but you because that's how these convos work. But that's why DAZ went on about its business with its figures and you're here trying to make us believe Poser is still relevant with 10 year old figures that bend slightly better with a bunch of fixes... a figure that was also made by DAZ.

I think your time would be better spent using the other choices available if you're so anti-DAZ. You have options like Roxie or Dawn, or scarlett. If you need clothing, Vickie won't mind you borrowing a few of her pieces; but you can't proclaim your software is superior if you have to keep showing up on her doorstep.

Anyway, it's bed time for me.