Our long term technical direction will be to use the in-kernel framework and we are actively collaborating with Hans Verkuil who maintains that part of the Linux kernel. At the moment the kernel parts hook into the libCEC support within Kodi, but at some point code needs to be reworked to drop that dependency. I'm not directly involved or sure whether this will happen in v18 as GBM/DRM and V4L2 graphics support has a higher priority, but it's a firm item on our long-range to-do list.
the cec framework will only be enabled on the RPi if using the vc4 driver IIRC and we have no intention to switch to vc4 at the moment.
I am working on the Kodi integration for the cec framework however and hope to have it in kodi 18 as it can be used on other devices.
Does that mean that Raspberry users will have to deal with libCEC for a very long time?
I think that's bad news 
Does that mean that Raspberry users will have to deal with libCEC for a very long time?
I think that's bad news
yep
