So what's stopping anyone from forming a group or foundation based on donations from like-minded people? And maintain a secure, free fork? I see this topic often enough on HN, this might a big enough group.
it need not be money a dozen developers donating code full time would work but that is harder to get.
They fall short of the numbers you suggest, but it's kind of encouraging that some people can do that for an entirely new project. Time will tell how it works out for them, but I could feasibly imagine a Firefox fork gaining similar ground, should people get tired of Mozilla's stewardship for whatever reason.
After all, even something like 3% of the market share is way more of a proof of feasibility than 0% and if you get a bunch of money when that figure is 0% like Ladybird, things can only get better for a project built on established technology.
Still I wish them luck.
I feel like this approach has a much better shot at being sustainable and giving power back to users and clients, despite having its own challenges. I would like it if political fallouts such as this one didn't mean I have to completely migrate to a brand new system. Compare that to Linux, where I can say, migrate to Rocky if CentOS stops being a viable choice, without losing any of my tooling or configuration.