This could be good for Smugmug or bad for Flickr. Smugmug is more of a commercial site used by wedding photographers and other commercial kinds of photography. Flickr is more free-wheeling, undoubtedly because of the free access, which I think makes it more interesting from a photography point of view. The culture of the two sites is different, with Smugmug being more conservative, and even staid, while Flickr is a community that welcomes experimentation and chance, and is open to differences.
It would be sad if Flickr were to become just another platform for generic, cliché, run of the mill, “safe” photography.