No that's not true! Svelte is a standalone project. Rich Harris, the founder and face behind Svelte, is paid by Vercel to work on it full-time.

From the same link above: >> "Joining Vercel enables Rich to work on Svelte full-time, giving the project its first dedicated contributor. The governance of Svelte does not and will not change – it's still the same independent, open-source project and community. With Vercel's backing, Svelte can get even more ambitious."

I know Rich Harris explicitly says, at least when Vercel ownership comes up, that he has a lot of leeway and total control of the project; is there any reason to think that Vercel will force Sveltekit to adopt similar things as Nextjs?