It is unreasonable to expect every aspect of the Bitshares development process to be posted online. Github commits hardly paint a full picture and threads like this often become an echo chamber for disgruntled armchair project managers. You would know if development was in actual turmoil because the devs would be dumping their significant holdings.
Part of the reason the "gag" is necessary is to start managing investor expectations. Do you want core developers theorycrafting back and forth on the forums or writing code? Should Dan have to hire a scribe to jot down every internal discussion that pertains to development and then post it on the forums? No, you're right, we should have all of the devs start filling out time sheets and posting them online. They'd love that. And just to be extra sure, let's have Stan hovers over their workstations at random intervals to keep them on their toes and REALLY let 'em know that we're watching.
As investors, we have been spoiled by the unprecedented transparency offered by this project in its infancy. Those days are gone. Investors have never, and will never have 100% oversight on the way development and business processes unfold precisely because of the unsubstantiated speculation thrown around in this thread.