Are bug fixes vetted before they are introduced in stable releases?
A bug fix[1] on get_url changed its basic functionality when run under check mode. The broken behavior has been in Ansible for years, but a stable release made it work correctly for the first time and broke[2] existing code that expected broken behavior.
Typically projects hold off on larger bug fixes like this until major releases. I would have had no problem with 2.8.0 breaking this.
Thanks,
Michael
[1] https://github.com/ansible/ansible/commit/9c7d36ccb517319e5e8bf8c448a7bea67f840c32