This way we all have our freedom, and the resulting complexity is managed.
We can all go our own way, and we can all navigate relative to each other.
Anyone who is just starting out, or who doesn't want paid tech support, can install the reference distro,
If and when this fails to meet your needs, go shopping for a fork.
If something goes wrong, try it again with the reference distro before posting questions online. This way you can narrow down the source of the problem. The reference distro will end up getting many eyes and become well debugged. The forks will be at a disadvantage there, but then there's paid support.
If a fork is buggy, the reference can serve as a "safe mode."