This is still going on, it took two attempts to download the latest (updated sqlite version) using fossil version [a742cfa292]. This is what I saw:

<verbatim>
fossil pull
Server:
                Bytes      Cards  Artifacts     Deltas
Send:             130          1          0          0
Received:        3174         70          0          0
Send:             600         10          0          0
Received:           0          1          0          0
fossil pull
Server:
                Bytes      Cards  Artifacts     Deltas
Send:             600         11          0          0
Received:       60812         80          7          3
fossil pull
Server:
                Bytes      Cards  Artifacts     Deltas
Send:             130          1          0          0
Received:        3174         70          0          0
</verbatim>