Oh please...
I have no respect for CL after this thread and I certainly have no sympathy for them. I do think it's a pretty gutsy move to use sympathy as a way to get people to forgive them for selling them a defective product. What if you bought a brand new car in which the wheel freezes up and you total the car against a tree. You call up the company and they say, "Oh I'm sorry, the engineers didn't get paid, and they said it would probably be okay. We should have a fix for you in a few weeks though." You'd be hopping mad to the point of asking for refunds to sueing for misrepresentation at the least, so why is CL any different???? They sold you what is basically very buggy and in some cases unusable software for $349 and you are thanking them for it???? I'm sorry I don't get it. Is CL even offering refunds or just a promise of a patch in "x" weeks, because lord knows refunds are the enemy of the software industry.

To me, if they truly cared about the legitimate users, CL would have spent some of that "code protection" money on finishing the product and getting known bugs out while still being able to pay their programmers, but it's more important that Billy doesn't use his Poser on two different computers at the same time, then whether it works at all on anyone's computer.

And don't say I know anything about what it takes to make software happen, because I've been in development for over 15 years and I have even been in a similar situation where the company holds the carrot in front of you to get you to stay for your reward. As a developer, no one wants to see a program go south after three years. After three years, you are pretty much exhausted as has been said, but if five weeks means you will get the reward that you were promised, you kinda figure "What's another 5 weeks after 3 years..." Also there is a certain amount of pride in completion, but that pride pretty much gets sucked up when it's released knowing it has all kinds of problems that will have to be fixed later when it's much more difficult. It's even worse when the programmers are pushed to the point of saying, "Whatever, just get it out there so we can pay our mortgage..."

I'll certainly agree that it's impossible for companies to find all the bugs in their software from just beta testing, especially in a world with different video cards, OS versions, CPU's, etc, etc, etc. However, to release a product knowing that it's buggy in order to make a quick buck goes way past shemeful IMO, to this community and the 3d world at large (especially those who are not benefiting from the knowledge gotten from these discussions).

$349 is not an easy price to come up with. To all those that want to hear CL's story of sacrifice, how about the story of those that had to scrape up and sacrifice to be able to buy this lemon??? What about them???

I'm sorry, but I'll be one of the last to buy Poser 5 and given this heartwrenching scenario about how their programmers aren't getting paid and Kupa just now got a check, it wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't a CL in a year. What happens when Poser 5 dies down (or is cracked which is very likely)? They'll be out of business and the buyers will be up a creek without a paddle. Remember, except for these forums, there is no official documentation that says in the event of their demise, there will be a crack furnished to unlock the software for legitimate users.

Sorry Kupa, but all I hear is violins playing in the background...

This is all my opinion...and will probably most likely get me flamed, but someone had to say it...