I there there are a couple of things to consider here. Firstly, ASP, as it exists right now isn't going to stop working, so those of us who have time effort and money invested in it have some time to find the exit ramp. Equally, it's pretty clear that as a living product, it's dead - there will be no future updates, and there's no reason to invest any more time and effort in it as a platform going forward.
For the Linux userbase, it seems clear to me that Darktable is the way forward. It shows a lot of promise, and has the great strength of free software projects that this sort of corporate parasitism can't kill it. Equally, it has a way to go on the UI front in some regards. I'd have thought that an influx of new users at the more experienced demanding end of the spectrum would probably be welcomed if we came with some constructive criticism and tried to help out, where skills and time make that possible. I'd certainly love to see some of the ASP plugins (asGPS, gradfilter) make an appearance in Darktable, and if I were a plugin dev, I'd be pretty hacked off with Corel about now. As a user, I'd be completely willing to contribute to that, even if just through a donate button (dt is GPL3, so a proprietary plugin isn't really viable).
Also, as a relative newcomer to Darktable, it seems to be in need of some good documentation. I bought the B5 survival guide (though not the ASP one, due to some nervousness about the future of ASP, ironically). I'd cheerfully buy a Darktable survival guide if afx were to write one
My hope is that by the time ASP becomes useless to me, Darktable will be a better option anyway, so in the long run, this may not matter, and the exodus from ASP will contribute to a strong, free (as in freedom) alternative on the Linux platform down the line, that's not vulnerable to the sort of thing that has killed Bibble/ASP.
