It has gone off topic because we can ALWAYS count on DS users to come into Poser threads to tell Poser users that they need to jump on DS cash merry-go-round. We don’t pollute the DS threads, but DS users don’t have a problem disrupting ours. And the moderators don’t seem to mind either. Which is why fewer and fewer people are participating in the Poser forums. The regulars at both the SM forums and the Hivewire forums used to be regulars here.

Daz made the decision to support DS through content because no one was willing to pay Poser prices for a software product that had no documentation and most of the features were still beta (and would not run on a lot of machines, since they used an older version of Qt to compile the UI). It was free for 30 days, then a “limited” time to free (and the basic & advanced versions slid down the memory hole).

As far as versions of Poser, I’d remind you that 90+% of the Poser users here are running Poser 9 or later - the only folks using old versions of Poser are vendors.

Poser has been “dying” since at least Dec 2004 that I am personally aware of. I am not too terribly concerned - how many times has Daz3d been sold now?

Poser isn’t dying - Poser Vendors are dying off, but that is due to their decision not to support any figure not made by Daz. The fact that they compound this by not diversifying isn’t the customer’s fault.

Back on topic - SM has a new development team that seems to understand some of the long-term issues. They are soliciting the end users for issues - unfortunately, most folks here would rather whine in a 3rd party forum than use the system SM has set up. Because, reasons. Go back to the OP’s comments - they really do believe that SM should adjust their feedback system to accommodate their laziness.