I asked Zemlin (Linux Foundation executive chairman) about that yesterday. He wasn't familiar enough with the LibreSSL project (and obviously the OpenBSD guys have different goals in some regards, than the OpenSSL guys) to comment, but the idea is that this initiative would support any project that is important to the well-being of the net.
But even if LibreSSL is a huge success, OpenSSL isn't going to go away and it's important that that existing project get support from the people that use it an benefit from it the most. Which is exactly what is happening.
This reminds me of XFree86. Some said XFree86 would still be around after the X.org fork. The culture of XFree86 was so bad though that the project was effectively abandoned by everyone except for the "leader" David Dawes before X.org was even operational.
Projects with poisoned cultures appear to die off. With the ratty code-base and aversion to contributions by OpenSSL it seems like a good candidate for abandonment.
The LibreSSL guys are much more willing to tackle the problems, remove all backwards compatible crud and modernize it. Because the things they are removing are jaw dropping: http://opensslrampage.org
That's true -- but the circumstances are notably different.
1. xFree86 kicked Keith Packard out and he joined up with Xorg/free desktop.
2. Most XFree86 devs migrated to X.org
3. The License Change. And this is key. The switch to a GPL v2-incompatible license. that made it incompatible with the Linux kernel and almost every project.
Moreover, the major users of XFree86 were linux and Unix-like distro. That's a big market but comparably small with the number of projects that use OpenSSL.
Could OpenSSL disappear? Yes. But it won't happen overnight, simply because of the existing number of projects that use it.
But even if LibreSSL is a huge success, OpenSSL isn't going to go away and it's important that that existing project get support from the people that use it an benefit from it the most. Which is exactly what is happening.