[abstract7]

My guess is that the whales have been securing parts of their codebases from internal leaks or something related but for security. Workflow disruptions. It may be bad code bitting them weeks or more after they pushed it.

There has been many embarrassing and controversial leaks this year. Allegations of uneven TOS enforcement. Hence the WH Social Media Summit. Could also be security related combo ahead of the elections that also is a bit sensitive for low-trust devs.

Imagine code getting pushed that only a smaller subset of devs are privy to. Possibly pushing obsfucated code or launching services outside of the standard pipeline.

Remember that the spectre and meltdown patches for the Linux kernal was a nightmare because the normal open and free-to-discuss-and-review workflow was broken. That applies too in these situations with large codebases that internally are 'open-source'.