shvrdavid posted at 10:58PM Wed, 17 July 2019 - #4357280

Poser on the other hand, is not a production suite. So it is sort of niche in many ways. If it was converted to opensource, the chances of it surviving are slim to none

Based on what? That's like saying "don't start a business at all, because most businesses fail". Yes, they do, but a few do manage to find that sweet spot that makes it all work, and that's reason enough for many people to try, some over and over and over again. Poser has been commercial for many years and it's spiralling the drain, slowly and surely going down the tubes. Maybe it's time to try something new.

Poser is far better off with a company that wants to invest in it.

I agree, but "invest" can mean many things to many people. Can you honestly say that the Blender crew aren't "invested" in their product? Or the Linux guys?

Opensource, guarantees nothing.

Neither does the commercial approach, and we know that that's been tried, many times and for many years. Poser's running out of chances.

Rendo/Bondware have an investment in Poser

So did Fractal Designs, and Metacreations, and Curious Labs, and e-Frontier, and Smith Micro, and they all ended up bailing on it eventually.

Going opensource could damage that investment, and that isn't a route that I would think they would want to go. They have a huge opportunity to get a return on investment with Poser, and going opensource is not part of that opportunity. It is a huge risk....

Finally something I can agree with you on. Bondware probably DOESN'T want to give up on the ability to recoup its cost through selling licenses, but as I have said many times before, that's already been tried.