We fork it. Whatever carrot the VC's dangle can be chased by the handful who care, and the rest of us can continue using the important part.

Ah, so that's why it's written in Rust. Less people who care about Python packaging are capable of forking it.

I guess this is a joke but honestly I think that Python -> Rust is a pretty strong one.

I'd bet that the sort of person who is maintaining packaging for a bunch of Python users would like an opportunity to learn Rust on the job. I would.

IMO this is unlikely. Rust and Python have very little in common.