It's just vibe versioning, right? Fable 5 is a beloved product, it gets a .1 bump to feel close. Opus 5 and Sonnet 5 had a mixed reception, they get a .5 bump to create a sense of distance.

After what DeepSeek pulled with V4.1 Flash I've given up on trying to map LLM versions to semver.

Is this due to a similar safety concern or just because it's not ready yet for one (or more) of a myriad of possible reasons?

The coverage around 6.1 Astra seems deliberately playing into the dubious, recently headline "safety" narrative in a way that feels distinct. But you may be correct in which case, I would take the correction on board and maybe suggest a different alternative.

Although in theory if OpenAI was boycotted in this way the market pressure would force them to release. Then everyone moves back over there. Then Claude faces the same pressure. So even so, I think it could still work even if you have to trade off who you are boycotting from time to time.

Without more details on the credibility of the "safety" concern this seems like a totally coherent action for customers to take. We shouldn't put up with teasing.