It is somewhat ironic that the community affected is the Atom one, which was supposed to be built by (and for) next-gen cloud-first types who live in the browser. If all data has to live in the cloud, your source code will inevitably get there too - because source code itself is data. Sure, Kite went about it with an anti-pattern, but that makes little difference. Live by the cloud, die by the cloud.
Let's be honest, the real problem here is that Kite's offer is still not good enough. The service they provide at the moment is not worth handing out all your code, unlike with services like GitHub; and their leadership is not seen as smart (or honest) enough to tolerate them taking stewardship of this or that established project - something that happens every day in the OSS world (loads of companies de-facto own this or that OSS project, from RedHat to Google to Ubuntu to IBM, steering as they see fit).
As soon as Kite (or anyone else) can provide a compelling service, people will go to great lengths to use their stuff and give them their code, without any dark pattern being required - ethics be damned.
Let's be honest, the real problem here is that Kite's offer is still not good enough. The service they provide at the moment is not worth handing out all your code, unlike with services like GitHub; and their leadership is not seen as smart (or honest) enough to tolerate them taking stewardship of this or that established project - something that happens every day in the OSS world (loads of companies de-facto own this or that OSS project, from RedHat to Google to Ubuntu to IBM, steering as they see fit).
As soon as Kite (or anyone else) can provide a compelling service, people will go to great lengths to use their stuff and give them their code, without any dark pattern being required - ethics be damned.