Guys, seriously, you should not believe all those rumours. Chances are pretty good it's all just bullshit.
Being on the Softimage beta list I am under NDA and therefore cannot really say anything, but what I can say is this: I have been on the Softimage beta for years now. After the takeover things obviously changed, but honestly, that is not really a surprise. Different company, different goals, different philosophies and so on. Fact is that new Softimage versions got released every year => developers are constantly working on Softimage => these developers get paid => no company would pay developers to work on something that will be killed in the near future. Note that I am neither saying everything is great nor everything is bad. All I am saying is that I believe it is *not* doomed. Cheers, Eric