redhat holds most of the expertise on those projects, so forking them, while possible, would be hard. Debian and Canonical would probably have an easier time developing something from their own expertise rather than relying on a 'once things get bad' fork.
Forks historically only really work if the fork comes from within.
Can they not be forked in the case of a sudden change of direction that Debian, or anyone else disagrees with?
What do you mean by "control"?