Yes, I'm pretty sure it's not related to Fossil, since it happens with vacfs as well. Also, Venti was pretty much unchanged during the last few years.
I suspected it was related to the lock change on 2013-09-19. https://github.com/0intro/plan9/commit/c4d045a91e But I remember I tried to revert this change and the problem was still present. Maybe I should try again to be sure. -- David du Colombier