I went and spoke with Stephen Hahn offline. He was able to give me an example that sounds plausible:
A vendor delivering support for hardware in a situation where it is contractually obligated to keep the information private for a certain period of time. I.e. Intel giving Sun specs for a chipset that is going to be open but not until Intel announces, ships, whatevers that part. In this situation, I agree that getting an inception review in private would make more sense. However, I don't think that this sort of thing should be the norm. It should occur infrequently and under a well described set of conditions that includes a final review in public. Apologies for my previous confusion. -j
