I don't think distributions dropping it will have that big of an impact considering you only ever used those versions to bootstrap as you needed to `-U` update it regularly to keep it working (except maybe on Arch and similar bleeding edge, rolling distros).

I kind of hope they adopt flatpak or appimage based disto for it, giving it a more standard distribution mechanism and promoting one of those platforms.

Either way, this sort of advertisement is hard to beat. I'd expect the project to come out of this with more manpower, not less.