On the sickness of our community

It'll be lot easier for an alternative to arise now that an initial implementation has defined what the requirements really are. Indeed, having at least two alternatives for every software niche in the FOSS world seems very common. I'm sure we all could think of many examples.

I wouldn't be surprised if in 3-5 years there was a credible alternative. Either because of a disagreement with development philosophy, or license, or personality clash, or implementation language, or just because somebody got bored.