(During the drafting phase of this piece, much worse terms for them were considered, and deleted.) Poser had been going downhill under their stewardship anyway - the Firefly renderer was optimised for speed at the expense of quality, and then they off-shored the development team. So, Smith Micro are off my Christmas card list. "This must be some new usage of the word 'permanent' that I wasn't previously aware of." Both installations stopped working within a week or so of each other, and that means I have to rehash my favourite Douglas Adams quote yet again. I had two installations of Poser 11, both on the same licence which had been set to permanent using Smith Micro's licence admin page. I had naively thought that setting my licence to 'permanent' would mean it would last, you know, for ever. To be fair, I probably would have bought it anyway, even if I had known that Smith Micro could pull the rug from under my feet at any time. I wasn't fully aware that Poser 11 did this, until its recent acquisition by Bondware. I also understand the concept of not really owning software, but I'm old school, and if I give someone money for something I expect to be able to use the thing for as long as I like, not until they feel like breaking it.Īfter the Acid debacle, I don't want to buy another 'phone home' program ever again. Sure, the terms of use that I agreed to (as in, clicked through without reading) probably said that that could happen, with no recourse - but that doesn't make me feel any less angry. If that was a marketing strategy, it was the worst one ever.
A music program that I used to use and enjoy (Sonic Foundry's Acid) was taken over by Sony, and suddenly I couldn't run it any more unless I bought a new copy.
#Poser pro 11 upgrade software
Chances are that the new owners won't want or be able to adopt the existing activation mechanism, meaning your expensively purchased software will phone home, find no server, falsely accuse you of being a pirate, and shut itself down permanently. Phoning home is a questionable practice at the best of times, in my opinion, but when the software changes hands things can get seriously annoying. I can understand a software vendor wanting to protect their product against piracy, but when their DRM measures make things more stressful for their customers, they can't be doing themselves as many favours as they seem to think they are. Previous versions up to Poser 10 and Poser Pro 2014 (non Game Dev) are unaffected, and to the best of my knowledge you can reinstall an earlier version any time you like.
#Poser pro 11 upgrade update
Bondware have produced a new version which calls their own server instead, meaning that to continue using those versions of Poser, you have to update to the Bondware version. Now that Smith Micro are no longer the owners, that server has been shut off. Poser 11 (both basic and Pro) and Poser Pro 2014 Game Dev had a feature where they would need to contact an activation server at regular intervals in order to keep working. This journal will have a look at the consequences of that most recent change. Metacreations, Curious Labs, e frontier, Smith Micro - and now, Bondware. Poser has changed hands many times during its lifetime. (Image credit: XKCD licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
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