I'm not willing to hand much of anything to Smith Micro. On the SuperFly/Cycles issue, on the DAZ side, Materials for 3Delight are pretty much incompatible with Iray and it does cause issues with some vendors there dropping support for 3Delight materials. Having both rendering engines being compatible material wise has its advantages.

On the other issue, of relying on another company, I think the industry really should move to some standards as an industry where applicable allowing everybody to share in the decisions and allowing objects to move between the programs better. Unless and until that happens though. yes, by depending on another company to lead in anything means you are vulnerable to sudden changes due to decisions they make that are beyond your control.

Sort of like Browsers, while they all operate differently, they are supposed to accept core standards of HTML, CSS3, and Javascript. Where they "embrace and extend" (and I'm looking straight at you Microsoft) it causes problems.