@TX: I was hoping that this would catch your eye. I know that you do a lot of code committee stuff and I've seen you express strong opinions on shear friction numerous times in the past. If you say that ACI's intention is to preclude prorating based on partial development length, then I will accept that as correct. I'd still like to debate the reasoning though.
Parsing your statements:
1) "Without full development, you cannot rely upon full tension capacity of the reinforcement." Right. But then, if our intention is to prorate, we don't require a clamping force commensurate with fy.
2) "The mechanism of a shear friction failure due to failure of the bar development would be catastrophic and sudden." Agreed. However, we accept brittle, catastrophic failure elsewhere in concrete design. The solution is usually just a higher factor of safety.
3) "You are relying upon the aggregate interlock with a very small roughness/amplitude, so a very small slip of the bars would create full failure." I think that your overall magnitude of slip would be less for bars that are partially utilized. I can think of two factors that would come into play. Firstly, most of the "action" in bar development occurs near where the bar enters the concrete. All other things being equal, a partially utilized bar with partial development length should slip less than a fully yielded bar with full development length. Secondly, based on some euro stuff that I've read, a little bit of concrete (~2 bar dia. deep) effectively spalls away where the rebar enters the concrete. Obviously, this would increase slip.
4) "Also, since you don't really know what the slip angle would be between the rocks, it would be impossible to compute a more precise answer." The first page of the attached sketch is a simplified version of my interpretation of this statement. Do I have your intent right? If so, I would have thought that a probabilistic averaging of the slip angles tributary to each bar would iron this out.
The greatest trick that bond stress ever pulled was convincing the world it didn't exist.