As the complaints piled up, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which manages the site simply shut down the entire GitHub repository without explanation. According to them, they did this because people were confused about the difference between the front-end and back-end systems and the issues that people were raising on GitHub was only adding to the confusion. From the perspective of the open-source community, it was exactly the wrong thing to do.
“By removing the GitHub repository, they removed from view any surface area by which they might communicate to interested developers what the actual situation was,” says Karl Fogel, an open-source technology consultant who works with government agencies. “Instead they just took it down so there’s this blank space leaving everyone speculating and assuming the worst.”