This was changed in the last cycle or so so if there aren't people challenging petitions they get semi-automatic renewals. Honestly, for unlocking bootloaders (

This was changed in the last cycle or so so if there aren't people challenging petitions they get semi-automatic renewals. Honestly, for unlocking bootloaders (note I initially wrote this comment in the mental context of carrier unlocks and then immediately went and edited it as I realized) we probably never needed the exemptions anyway, as there is a standing exempting for interop (which still does most of the work: the argument for the extra exemption is to provide one last step for the end-user as in 2009 it wasn't clear they could run the result, but currently everyone things they should be).