Is the code freeze preventing xmr-stak from running correctly? I have been away for a little bit and just tried to boot up my miner, but I keep getting "result rejected by the pool" displayed.
A code freeze wont prevent you from mining correctly. I suggest ensuring you are using a miner and pool that supports the current Monero hashing algorithm and ensure you have configured the miner correctly, as if you are getting shares rejected, this is the first place to look. But no, nothing to do with a code freeze would cause this.