I think from what I can understand about Serenity OS and Ladybird from afar and the kind of Cathedral culture that Andreas Kling values and feels Apple benefits from I'm not wholly surprised that the development of Ladybird took this course.

What I am curious about as someone who has been kind of cheering off on the sidelines is if there's any way that folks could get involved still in the future or if this is in practice permanently a closed project?

BSDs are more cathedral style and getting maintainer status is usually pretty onerous from what I understand but there are at least routes to it available to people willing to make an appropriate level of investment.

I'm not at a point in my life where I can meaningfully provide that kind of time and energy into serenity or ladybird but if my circumstances changed it's the kind of open source project that I would love to dedicate my time and energy towards in the future and I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that way.