At this point … what stops the CVE foundation moving on as a foundation and working to find an alternative funding model?

I guess I don’t see the need to os switch on the steam deck. Unless playing and switching is what you want to do.

If what you want is gnome, there are easier ways than a whole new OS.

Steam Deck with the ability to run Fedora workstation (I love Gnome)

Don’t be too focussed on needing to run Fedora for access to Gnome. The OS on the deck (Arch in this case) has the ability to run Gnome. It’ll just be getting it working “right” that’ll be a pain. I would have thought some people are already on it (even if just for a laugh). A cursory web search says it does work with some odd input issues.

That is the beauty of (and often the complexity of) the Linux ecosphere. You can change one thing, Fedora to Arch, and the other things “should” still work.