Hopefully. But if Intel were paying them to do so, doing it for free without secure financial backing might not be appealing. I do hope you are right.

The laid off employees will move on to a new full-time job, your fork will have to find maintainers somewhere else.

Similar happened when Mandriva went under and Mageia started about 15ish years ago.

Mageia is my favorite of the Mandrake descendants.