I think it's pretty typical to make decisions early on in a project based on expediency, especially when you don't know how popular that project might end up be

I think it's pretty typical to make decisions early on in a project based on expediency, especially when you don't know how popular that project might end up being. The article actually understates how long this has been in the works. A predecessor of lacros was started around 2015ish. It's not an easy change to make on a fast-moving codebase.