My current LR Classic CC/PS contract runs until the end of the year. I am not sure whether I will renew again at that time or not. We'll see how things look in December with LR and the competition.
I have been playing around with darktable 2.4.2 (Windows version) for the last week, studying, and searching for info about its use. I have learned a whole lot already. Evaluating software well takes lots of time to really get familiar with it. Too many people try something for a short time, find things that are different than what they are accustomed to, become irritated, and then decide they dislike it. Also, it is easy when spending too little time for the evaluation to think something is missing or can't be done, but with more time you discover it is there and can be done. Someone who is familiar with dt for a few years and then evaluates LR would just as likely be annoyed by how LR does some things.
I am looking at several areas to decide what I think overall about dt (or any other software such as ACDSee, etc.):
1. Power and flexibility to do many processing operations.
2. Ease of doing the processing operations I do most of the time (which is certainly a subset of the full power of LR/dt/ACDsee/etc.)
3. What it (dt in this case) has that my current program (LR in this case) doesn't have?
4. What my current program (LR in this case) has that it (dt in this case) doesn't have?
5. Quality of results.
6. The DAM aspects, what it has, what it doesn't have, ease of use, etc.
7. Use of system resources, speed, etc.
I am getting some impressions after some use, but I am still learning. These programs have lots of features, nooks & crannies, intuitive and not so intuitive features, and so on. It really takes time to do a fair, relatively unbiased evaluation for my own use.
Having said all that, I at one time thought I might finally post my thoughts, but as I have said before, there are hundreds, thousands of people who read posts here but almost no one bothers to post. I doubt if I will provide any more free content for them to leech off. This post is probably already too much. I suggest everyone do their own careful evaluation and research of any software, camera, etc.
What I will say is that so far I have found some areas that I like dt better, some areas where I like LR better, and some areas about the same.