How exactly is giving away a lite version of the software in order to promote content sales predatory? What you described about Photoshop essentials is much more predatory and fits the description that you just gave more accurately "look at all the features you didn't get because you didn't pay enough", and yet you praised it for getting a lot of work done anyway.

Like I said, most people don't use the content creation tools in Poser or DS. So why charge them for something they may never use, when that money could instead be spent in the content store, buying content to use in the basic 'debut' version of Poser. It's pretty difficult to compete with free. There's a number of people that think Poser should be free just like DS is free. And I'm willing to bet one of the primary reasons DS has so many users is because it's free. So provide a similar means for new and returning users to get familiar with Poser and get them hooked without first forking out a few hundred bucks only to discover it may not be what they're looking for.

"Fully functioning software that may have some limitations" is not fully functioning software. Contradiction within the same sentence there. "It's %100 yours free! Just pay $59 shipping and handling!"