Changing the UI to no longer work is a very non-emacsy thing to do. There's a lot of existing doc and tutorials explaining the org template system, as well as current users who have trained fingers. Breaking <s[tab] will be unpleasant. 
ELPA makes package upgrades much more transparent, which means users will not necessarily notice that Org is getting updated. And emacs has trained users that upgrading is harmless. Without intervention, emacs will behave the same as it did before.