What I find most surprising, is that I don't think we got any sort of timeline from Apple on this change and its very vague (which just fuels articles like this).

So did this initiative within Apple just start and we could be looking at this change coming in Mac 28?

I don't remember another time of an announcement like this from Apple of a major change with so little information, though I could be wrong or hint of when.

Regarding the concern, while I do hope that there is still a way to grant actual full disk access to some applications. Even Apple called out a non controversial need for something like that, backup software. I can also think of security scanning software, a lot of businesses have those deployed to corporate Mac's. I do also think that better controls around it, especially in this age of vibe coded apps that never actually think about security or actively hostile companies like meta.