That's an important point and totally true, unfortunately Elive pretty depends on Enlightenment but stability is a must requirement, that's why i emphasize in "betatest e25+, play with all the configurations, and report to phab everything you see wrong"
I know how @triantares likes E16 
me too, but i totally agree with @IamElive on his entire post, and the idea is not to remove E16 (it will be kept as an option, and/or in a special EliveRetro version), but just move forward to better (which again, needs to be perfectly stable), Elive 3.0 is a good example of that, it was so good with its very own customized desktop and many features and niceness included, from time to time I boot this version to test something and I amaze myself (and remember) how good it was lol, it makes me thing "yeah, we need to move forward! e16 is taking too long!"
yes and no, is not black or white (FOSS or no-FOSS) but it is true that (unfortunately) on this world the money is a very depending thing, and like he said, with money also you can make the product (elive) better by allowing you to have more resources (in any sense that can be useful to be spend)
