But if removing 1kLOC and replacing them with 25 for a much better function, there is a -975 LOC report. Does this count as negative productivity? Having brackets start and stop on their own lines could double LOC counts but would that actually improve the code base? Be a sign of doubling productivity?

The OpenBSD project prides itself on producing very secure, bug free software, and they largely trend towards as low of lines of codes as they can possibly get away with while maintaining readability (so no codegolf tricks for the most part). I would rather we write secure bug free software than speed up the ability to output 10kLOC. The typing out code isn’t the difficult part in that scenario.