This makes no sense given development is not driven by any one entity that might work privately and start publishing later. All development on these projects is done in the open by a variety of entities who have no mutual interest in colluding in this way.

Systemd is a mix of GPL2 and LGPL. Flatpak is LGPL. Neither has a CLA. Many other parts of the ecosystem are GPLs. It makes no sense for this ecosystem to start serving up primarily FOSS applications with FOSS ethos-es as a proprietarified storefront.