Honestly, collision avoidance is a bad thing -- it looks to me that the licensed pilots out there that have had a leg up on others particularly from the money making end are just pissed that this drone, which I believe is small enough to quality as a drone anyone can fly AND make money from, will permit the rest of us to make some money.
In order for this industry to progress there needs to be progress made in collision avoidance and this appears to be a first step. Looking down the road a decade or so and assuming the industry isn't ruled out of existence there are likely to be fully autonomous drones with advanced collision avoidance using a suite of sensors and transponders. I can see a transponder that other radars can ping and I can see on-board radar as well.
We are going to have fully autonomous drones for SAR and border patrol -- yes, we now use the Predator on the southern border, but a vastly cheaper fleet of drones operating 24/7/365 for security and domestic protection is inevitable.
So, it looks like I pretty well nailed this a while back when I suspected a longer flight time P4 with some collision avoidance tech. But again ... this is a first step. For me the bigger value is the longer flight times. I have photo/video mission ideas that could benefit from longer flight times and being able to follow a route for 6, 8 even 10 miles would be sweet.
Yes, there will be idiots that do stupid things with drones, but a $1700 drone is probably going to be a bit beyond the reach of the average a-hole.
Brian