ProtocolZero posted at 4:05PM Wed, 17 July 2019 - #4357230

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 11:21AM Wed, 17 July 2019 - #4357212

Guys, nobody purchases a full-fledged program only to make it free and open source. Please.

Right. Because the business-as-usual model has worked so well for Poser up to this point, hasn't it? How many times has Poser been sold now, how many disappointing releases have there been, and how many times have we heard "this could be the end of Poser"? And isn't it about time to try something new to break that cycle? It's got to break down completely at some point, and my guess would be that this is it.

Blender and Linux are able to survive and even thrive as FOSS because of a dedicated and enthusiastic community of developers, users, and backers, and I see no reason why Poser wouldn't be able to do the same. Imagine a community with access to the code and the things they would be able to do with it -- features you've wanted to add to Poser for years and now suddenly you could, or things that you've begged them to fix and yet they carry over from version to version.

As it stands right now, Bondware/Renderosity are simply the latest buyer to acquire Poser, keeping it alive long enough to release yet another disappointing version that sees the user base shrink even further. Poser has become something like Michigan J. Frog from "One Froggy Evening" (1955) (http://www.supercartoons.net/cartoon/732/one-froggy-evening.html), where each new person to come across it starts out with visions of success, and in the end are desperate to get rid of the thing.

The business-as-usual model has already changed, just by nature of Poser being owned by Renderosity. Previous Poser business model was primarily software driven, and less focused on content (relying more on third party support). Now it will be both, which I think will be beneficial to Poser in the long run.