Based on prior experience, one wonders what exactly The Plan and "industry standard" will be a year or so from now.

Well unless the wheels fall of the cart or there is a quantum leap there is no reason not to expect the "industry standard" to not remain what is in common use in the CG industry.... which is what makes it a standard not because someone adopts it. Well its pretty easy to explain the whole mesh split episode, Genesis one had a single mesh to support both male and female shapes while this was awesome for creating unisex type monsters and had a wealth of positive aspects. It wasn't as strong in the differences between male and female human anatomy especially in clothing creation aspects. There are a lot of other reasons than this that can be dug into but it's as simple as Genesis 1 was born it did have a lot of strengths and was very successful. But when planning Genesis 2 developers took on board feedback from users and content creators and decided the splitting figure again would solve some of the issues the unification had created.

Adaption is the key to long term success in anything. Those that fail to adapt or change are quickly left behind. Are you saying that they DAZ3D shouldn't adapt or innovate?

@Joe-

The solution is simple for you, spend a little time make a product submit to Daz, sign the necessary paperwork and you can access the HD tools with the same usage rights as any PA. Might take you a few days to get it sorted.

The reason why it's not free to everyone is simple, the tech took time and money to develop. If Daz3d decide to just give it away for free the competition vendors such as ones at Renderosity can just say thank you and start pumping out cheap content and DAZ3D will fail to recuperate their investment in developing the tech. It's a common approach in most industries R&D and development cost $$$. Remove return and then you have no $$$ for future R&D and development.

Also what is wrong with DAZ3D using the return they make from the PA's content, to invest in tools that give the same PA's a market advantage in making content? 

Also considering that DAZ makes its money from content because they give away the software and base development tools free, you should consider the HD as their brand and internal tools. They don't have to give it away because people don't want to learn the traditional methods. They're not going to budge on it right now so if you need to put more detail in your models, you do it the old fashioned way. If you wish to sell models with HD, then by all mean contact DAZ.. but you don't to get to just play with it... no PA does.