My only guess is they have a parallel skunkworks working on the same thing, but in a way that they can keep it closed-source - that this was a hedge they think they no longer need, and they are missing the forest for the trees on the benefits of cross-pollination and open source ethos to their business.
It's a classic "between a rock and a hard place" scenario. Quite a conundrum.
If the players in the space have naturally coalesced around one over the last decade, can we skip the thrashing and just go with it this time?