I'm sure at some point people will shift away from filament, at least in part. However, it works very well, and right now it's the only thing I can have on my desk in my room, knowing I'm not going to spill resin, there's no cleanup, no powder going everywhere. I will also be able to print all the plastic parts to whatever printer I want next with this one. While it's probably possible to get better prints, the general experience for me as an engineering student in my bedroom, wanting prototypes, this convenience is worth a lot when I'm already printing much more accurate pieces than I really need.
I switched my prusa2 to a mendelmax the other day, and it didn't really seem like I lost much of the self-replicatingness. Sure the extrusions are more metal, but it was much much simpler and quicker to put together, which is just as important for replicating. I would hesitate far less to persuade someone who wasn't hugely technical to build one, so at the end of the day, more printers.
I think it is a very good thing that the reprap community is building really cool stuff, rather than being wholly fixated on the self-replicating aspect, which for many people is not that important. I know I don't care any more about the philosophy about self replication than I do when I'm milling better parts for my mill - for me it is just a nice coincidence that a tool can improve itself.
