For me Lightroom that I love and hate at the same time is still irreplaceable at the moment.
If there are good and very good alternatives to it (Capture One), personally I don�t find any full solution, catalog + raw development, corresponding to my needs (and surely to my habits after having used LR since the first version).

That said, things seem to be moving a little.
First with Afinity Photo which has many qualities, but which is still far from being able to replace Lightroom, and in the very near future with Luminar 2018 which seems very promising.
If you are looking for some alternative to Lightroom and the Adobe monopoly take a look here: https://macphun.com/luminar
Good competition is good for us.

I did not tell of hate, but of love and hate (I think that an Italian can understand very well this kind of feeling).
And I have said that personally I don't see a valid alternative to it.

What I don't like in Lightroom and Adobe is their monopolistic position and their abuse of it (Flash is a good example of a completely useless technology that Adobe continues to impose with their automatic updates, letting people believe that they need it when in fact if you completely remove it from your computer, as I did, you will absolutely don't miss it. Another example is how they have destroyed their competitor Freehand - well business is business could you say).

I hope a lot in the development of a valid competitor (not only for Lightroom, but for all Adobe products) for a simple reason:
Competition is good for the final users, and we are the final users

As long as Adobe will have the dominant position that they have on the market we will not see real great improvements in their software.
Sure Lightroom is one of the Adobe products having had the greatest improvements during these last 10 years. But other software like Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign have shown very little changes since the creation of the CS line, this in great part because of a lack of valid competitors.

I understand that you "don't even remotely see anything that can replace an extremely powerful image database system both for video and photo, plus all the editing and color grading available with eventually a few trips to PS", because actually there is not.
But this does not mean that it is a good thing for us users

Whether or not alternative software is an adequate replacement for Lightroom depends on how you make use of Lightroom. I don't think anyone else has a Book module (but I am guessing the module is not much used, so that probably isn't an issue), for example.

Everyone uses a subset of a program's features - lots of different subsets though.

Not everyone will be able to do this, but I purchased Affinity Photo a while back - even though I don't use it - to encourage alternatives to flourish. I use Photoshop every day, but I would like some options if CS6 no longer runs on some future version of the OS. I recently pre-purchased Luminar 2018 for the same reason. Aurora HDR isn't bad either, but I still think hand blending exposures produces the best results so I'm less concerned about that area of features.

Regarding subscriptions, it's less the price that removing the incentive for Adobe to do a good job. I haven't seen any of their new features be tempting enough for me to switch to CC - which I would if they did anything compelling with new features.

I do find it frustrating that many of the great features in competitive software could have been in Lightroom years ago had Adobe been giving it the love it should have had. Fill mask (capture one) should have been in Lightroom, as should layers have been.

I did not tell of hate, but of love and hate (I think that an Italian can understand very well this kind of feeling).
And I have said that personally I don't see a valid alternative to it.

What I don't like in Lightroom and Adobe is their monopolistic position and their abuse of it (Flash is a good example of a completely useless technology that Adobe continues to impose with their automatic updates, letting people believe that they need it when in fact if you completely remove it from your computer, as I did, you will absolutely don't miss it. Another example is how they have destroyed their competitor Freehand - well business is business could you say).

I hope a lot in the development of a valid competitor (not only for Lightroom, but for all Adobe products) for a simple reason:
Competition is good for the final users, and we are the final users

As long as Adobe will have the dominant position that they have on the market we will not see real great improvements in their software.
Sure Lightroom is one of the Adobe products having had the greatest improvements during these last 10 years. But other software like Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign have shown very little changes since the creation of the CS line, this in great part because of a lack of valid competitors.

I understand that you "don't even remotely see anything that can replace an extremely powerful image database system both for video and photo, plus all the editing and color grading available with eventually a few trips to PS", because actually there is not.
But this does not mean that it is a good thing for us users

Perfectly agree with all above

I just got Luminar 2018 and I tested it a little bit today.

It has a some interresting filters, however, I guess that those who find Lightroom slow, will struggle with Luminar. My LR is instantaneous, while Luminar takes about second to show the effect of a basic adjustment.

I guess it can be useful, but I have more exploring to do before finding the best way to integrate it in my workflow.

Interesting thread.
I think in a while I will start to analyse the competition to LR/PS.
Still I really don't see any products that offer even half of what LR+PS do, and considering the price of $10 for the all package it is next too impossible to compete.
At the moment these alternative products are just for people who are experiencing problems of speed with LR, or for others that for some reasons dislike the subscription model

Interesting thread.
I think in a while I will start to analyse the competition to LR/PS.
Still I really don't see any products that offer even half of what LR+PS do, and considering the price of $10 for the all package it is next too impossible to compete.
At the moment these alternative products are just for people who are experiencing problems of speed with LR, or for others that for some reasons dislike the subscription model

Times ago it was a really good software: iView Media Pro.
Probably the best DAM that ever existed.
Then it has been bought by Microsoft, and at last by Phase One (Phase One Media Pro)�
� and it became a total disaster.
I have stopped to use it because it has stopped to render correctly the developed Nikon NEF (Nikon fault btw).

I would be happy if, more than 20 years after, I could find in the Lightroom Library module at least half of the features of iView (real hierarchical keywords, organization of keywords in non alphanumeric order, possibility to share the same open catalog on different computers, even if the files are on an external HDD, ability tor read almost every graphic, video and audio format, and so many other interesting features)�

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_One_Media_Pro