One of the things that initially interested me about ITIL was that it was a best practices framework that had come out of real use and was not simply a smokescreen to sell products and services. 

While it had its own strengths and weaknesses it offered a good knowledge base to the IT practitioner, and make his/her skill set much more portable between organizations as different IT shops started to standardize on the core ITIL processes (e.g. Incident, Problem, Change etc). 

However, these days it seems to have more of a hollow cynical feel to it, with commercial interests no longer strengthening it, but starting to erode its value. 

Some examples I can cite include:

• ITIL v3 - The ITIL v3 update was touted at addressing some shortcomings in ITIL, which it did to a certain extent. But were the side effects worth the improvements? For example, one of the more attractive things about ITIL was its start from the business Mantra - but V3 started introducing concepts like Event Management, which flies in the face of all that - focusing on a bottom up, boil the ocean view of IT service management. I've heard some of the presentations by the authors that this is not their intention, but that’s not how the sections read or how those vendors market their tools to this material. I plan to write a full article on Event Management in a couple of months because I see it as a huge step back to include it.
• Software Certification - ITIL was always more about the process and best practice, not prescribing how things must be done. It's ironic that it’s the management vendors that end up being extorted by the consulting companies to meet some standard that they simply invented and imply is all part of ITIL. Certainly I’ve worked with companies who believe them to be a core part of ITIL and want to include them in purchasing decisions, forcing the vendors to pony up the $$ to comply with a standard that doesn't exist! Now it appears that a more official software standard is on the way - I guess the sell out is finally complete.
• ITIL Certification - The Quality of the certification process seems to have degraded significantly. Certainly from speaking to people who have taken foundation certification after it was upgraded to v3, the questions seem to be focused only on rote learning and not about actually understanding the processes, the more advanced certifications seem to be a dizzying array of different courses and an expense that is out of the reach of all except those who's employer can afford to pay.
• The Quality of the reference materials. I still find myself reaching for my ITIL v2 books more than the V3 when I am looking for a reference point. I find the v2 books to be more thorough, more useful and much better written.
• Conferences - Some of those same tired old vendor presentations from the same tired presenter on thinly veiled product presentations make me think of that Bill Murray movie 'Groundhog Day'.

This is not to say that ITIL is no longer relevant because it certainly is. But I do think now is the time for people who want a real best practices framework and not an extension of certain companies marketing campaigns to try and take it back. Vendors have an important place to be, but they shouldn't abuse their position (and not all do), and users need to step up and get more involved in order to keep ITIL relevant now and into the future, because they will lose out in the end if they do not.