The external developer who started the work and was highly praised by Gitlab offered to work for them if they made a team around federation --> nothing.
A group of French universities are now considering making a group in order to work on it themselves and contribute back to Gitlab.
Gitlab will most likely use it as a big selling point once all the work has been done by externals with little to no cost to Gitlab.
Federation is a bad fit anyway. Gitlab should just state that and reiterate focus on core functionality and sustainability, so we don’t end up with another Gitorious situation.