Sure, there's a chance people will pick up the mantle and essentially fork Python 2.7 to do unofficial bugfix releases past 2020; as you pointed out, it's open

Sure, there's a chance people will pick up the mantle and essentially fork Python 2.7 to do unofficial bugfix releases past 2020; as you pointed out, it's open source and people can do what they want. But my point is there is no guarantee that will happen, nor that those unofficial releases will be of quality either. RH and Continuum on the other hand will most likely have financial incentives to make sure any maintenance they do meets the needs of their paying customers and thus are of a certain level of quality. IOW one possible future is more of a certain than the other.