I am among those Carrara users for whom the 8.5 release has mostly been a disappointment.

My first encounter with Carrara goes back to RDS 3.0 (or was it 2.0?) on a Power Mac 120, which I used for a product presentation, so I have been a Carrara user for quite some time.

I am not a Genesis user and I don't intend to become one anytime soon. The only new features in Carrara 8.5 for me are redesigned light icons, an improved timeline and probably some bug fixes. 

For an almost 3 years wait between Carrara 8.1.1.12 and Carrara 8.5, what I got amounts to not much.

Actually 8.5, in some respects isn't even as good nor as fast as 8.1.1.12. The new 'fast mipmap' filtering mode may be ok for a game engine but for a professional 3D app? Gimme a break. Large scenes such as Stonemason's Urban Sprawl 2 (http://www.daz3d.com/urban-sprawl-2-the-big-city) don't load properly in 8.5 in textured mode, which they did flawlessly in 8.1.1.12, and in anything other than fast mipmap filtering, the render times are about 10% slower, by my mesasurements. I run Carrara on a  PC with dual Xeon @ 2.6 GHz and 16 threads, 24 GB DDR3 RAM and Nvidia GTX 295. It's a bit of an aging machine but it's still very adequate even for demanding 3D apps.

So considering all these facts, isn't it time that Daz3D just sell Carrara, and who would be a good acquiror? Few companies comes to mind:

1. Microsoft: They already had a bad experience with Truespace which was a lot bigger than they could handle. But maybe Carrara is a simpler and easier to manage codebase. But then again Daz/Poser contents contain tons of nudity and might not suit well with a company like Microsoft.

2. Adobe: A multi-billion dollars company like Adobe definitely has the resources to handle Carrara which actually fits quite nicely within their line of products.

3. Corel: Carrara fits nicely within Corel's line of products, but Corel has a reputation to acquire products only to kill them right afterwards.

4. Maxon (Cinema 4D) or Newtek (Lightwave): These are great potential acquirors. They both consider products like Carrara/Poser as serious products, and they both have the resources to maintain and grow Carrara. But how would their customer base (some of world's most prominent production studios) react to such an acquisition?

5. Smith-Micro: Has the financial resources to develop Carrara further, but what would be the outcome of a 'friction' between Poser and Carrara? Probably the same outcome as the current friction between Daz Studio and Carrara.

6. E-Frontier: Former owner of Poser and currently mostly active in Japan with Shade. I have followed Shade since 2007. E-Frontier has come-up with a new improved verison of Shade every year since then, so it is a serious company. Shade has built-in support for Poser contents through Poser Fusion (although you would still need Poser installed), so Daz/Poser contents are part of E-Frontier's corporate culture. Shade Professional price tag in the US is $749 which is about the same price as a non-discounted Carrara. A look at this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0HyVyd0Thw should give you an idea of what an outstanding piece of sofware Shade really is.

In my opinion, among all the companies mentioned above, E-Frontier is the best candidate to acquire Carrara. They have the knowledge and expertise to handle a high-performance 3D app, they are familiar with Daz/Poser contents, they have been able to remain profitable with a 3D app in the Carrara price range and acquiring Carrara would probably allow them to expand their customer base outside Japan, which should result in an even more profitable, more stable company, which is precisely what Carrara needs at this stage.