Afrodite-Ohki posted at 8:16AM Fri, 21 June 2019 - #4353859

I meant organizing what had to be left for after they announced it. You'll remember that the moment the announcement was made, SM locked their Poser forums, now there's questions everywhere about what happens to all the information there, if they'll bring it over - and then there's the people asking about their previous purchases, if they'll be carried over, etc.

Having done more than a few acquisitions of software companies in my career, I can say this is likely what's going to happen:

1. The old SmithMicro forums may or may not continue to exist. They may be left online as a courtesy archive, but locked to read-only. Eventually, it will either be absorbed into here as some sort of legacy thing off to the side, or simply deleted once enough time has passed (a few years.) This assumes that the old forums are kept going. DAZ did the courtesy-forum thing with PoserPros' forums for something like 5 years(?) after taking it over. They only destroyed it entirely after traffic dropped below a certain point (forgot what point that was).

Renderosity might do the same thing, but a lot of it will depend on the costs and effort of keeping it going in-situ vs. importing the data into Rendo's existing forum software vs. forklifting the whole wad to a box that Rendo owns. Since Rendo didn't buy SmithMicro, the first option is likely out. Unless Rendo changed their forum software to not be that uber-bespoke thing they were selling years ago, the second option would likely require a long and painful process that won't justify the expense.

The last option is most likely, though it requires Smith Micro lending the old subdomain name (viz. DNS), or at least put up a 302 redirect and a lot of monkeying around - oh, and an SSL cert, naturally, but in spite of that, it's the most doable option... if SM agrees to help make that work on their end, and/or if it's part of the purchase contract.

Can't see much else being a viable option for that bit of it, really.

2. Previous purchases (off CP and whatever other software store SM owned and sold Poser from) are sacrosanct. Rendo will have to import that data and make that stuff available for re-download over a period of time, full-stop (I think it's 7 years or so depending on state laws?) As an alternate mechanism and in extreme cases, they can also manually supply older/ancient purchase download links by way of you contacting customer support with proof of purchase, which they can compare against the records they bought alongside the stuff. Either way, expect this bit of it to migrate over - and expect it to eat a lot of time and effort to mesh the data in with their existing CRM infrastructure.

It's likely they couldn't tell even the workers that this purchase was being made, otherwise the word could get out there and rumors would have been spread. So my guess is that they'll be looking for devs from now on, too.

I'm fairly sure they quietly informed the key devs of what was up, and that massive accommodation was made for a few of them to help incentivize them into staying.

Down at rank-and-file level, the devs would also be kept on, and given permission to work-from-home if they couldn't/wouldn't relocate. Odds are good that Rendo might have bought/leased a small office in the town where the devs were concentrated anyway.

Now the non-dev folks who worked for SM on Poser - the managers, support staff, and etc? Hate to say it, but if there are any, they just became (most likely) redundant. Rendo might keep on the PM, DevOps/sysadmin, Tech Writer(s), and other unique/key personnel, but unless you write code for the thing? If SM no longer needs you, odds are good that Rendo will probably not need you either (unless you can relocate, and even then maybe.)

And by now, Poser is a robust program. Sure, DS is free...

Let's just agree to disagree with your assessment and keep moving, 'k? ;)

The thing is, people are scared to use Poser's features, otherwise we'd have far superior images made in Poser everywhere.

This is true of any Prosumer application, regardless of cost. Some people can make an application truly sing, but most just barely make it gargle.

Given the right people working on it, the right documentation etc, I really think Poser can become famous again.

Documentation is a bugaboo for all apps these days, unless it's an app that has near-global attention (in which case documentation is comprehensive and omnipresent.) Writing a doc for something as complex as Poser is going to require a megaton of work. From personal experience: Even the joke-level-simple 2005-vintage DAZ Studio 1.0? Its user manual sucked down 300+ printed pages just to explain what it can do, and the basics of how to do each bit.

Nowadays, DS or Poser would require something on the order of 500-600 pages of documentation just to explain everything in it. This is now a full-time job for a tech writer (and not for a bored and at the time freshly-divorced codemonkey with nothing better to do on his weekday evenings.)

The biggest thing that can make Poser famous again would require a seismic shift in how people pursue their spare time. A lot of people love to do artwork, but not everyone has the time and/or skills to get past that cliff-steep learning curve that is CG, no matter how gently you try to introduce them to it. Fix that, and you have a high-volume money-printing machine.