"annex unlock" in thin mode of v6 hard-links key into the file location and makes it RW.  This is obviously for the case where modifications to the file need to be done and danger is understood. In my case, I need unlock to avoid having symlinks in the files since some software doesn't digest them well (might copy without dereferencing or dereference and look for neighboring files in the directory), and I want to use unlock to pretty much provide "symlink-free" view of the tree BUT at least with some protection, which could be given if files are unlocked read-only, so no inplace modifications could happen without explicit change of the permissions.

[[!meta author=yoh]]
[[!tag projects/datalad]]
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> [[closing|done]] because this never got to a concrete proposal that
> didn't have fatal problems. --[[Joey]]