What good would it do Apple to shut down the project?

There’s no IP misuse and the ability to boot an arbitrary OS is an intentional part of the design of M-series Macs. The built in lag time of the current situation ensures that macOS will never have its position as the dominant OS for Mac hardware challenged. Further, doing this would stoke the flames of the already red-hot internet Apple haters and unnecessarily burn goodwill. It’d be a loss across the board.