Nice review, as it covers all aspects of the tool, just some points:
-Remote debugging has not been implemented, we will add that on future releases
-ADOdb and Smarty are options, is not a must to develop applications with them, more Datasets can be created, for example, the IBX controls are Datasets but they don't use ADOdb, and Smarty is used in the form of a plugin, it's really easy to integrate any template engine of your choice.
And finally, note VCL for PHP is opensource under LGPL license, you can find the project page here:
vcl4php.sourceforge.net/
Regards