I share some of the frustration with Fedora developers "not listening" but I don't share all of the frustration.
As far as customizing CentOS / Fedora for server vs desktop vs laptop vs whatever, to me that is a moot issue.
In the server environment you almost certainly are using a virtual machine, and to use a virtual machine you create an image. Set up the image how you want and be done with it, you can then deploy it thousands of times and it is set up the way you need it.
I typically use the default image provided by Linode - it is a good image for a server, just remember to install the yum-cron package and enable the firewall.
I was one of the systemd haters initially but now I don't have an issue with it. Yes it is different than what I learned, but once I stopped yelling at the kids to get off my damn lawn, it wasn't that hard to figure out what I needed to do to get systemd to work for me instead of me working against it.
Gnome is the only place where I have serious issue with the direction Fedora is going. I loved Gnome 2 but hate Gnome 3 with a passion. I tried to love it, but I just can't.
They took away my vertical scroll bars. I understand most people scroll with a mouse wheel, but it is really hard to do that from my T series thinkpads.
The solution they gave me in the forums involved needing to write some CSS stuff - no gui checkbox, I had to create a CSS file.
And even that didn't fully work, some applications still didn't have scroll bars. Apparently that's because they weren't "ported" to the newer gtk or something. But if that's the case, where adding the CSS won't bring the scroll thing back, then they shouldn't lose it.
Fonts - they look horrible to me in Gnome 3 and no setting I could figure out made them look good.
Graphics - moving stuff around the desktop really taxed my built-in video, what use to be smooth was often choppy, especially on my Thinkpad T410.
Totem - for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to get it to not be full screen.
Switched to mate and all those issues instantly went away.
Gnome3 I think is an area where the Fedora developers are refusing to listen, but that isn't really an issue because they do package Mate and Mate is in EPEL so I can install it in CentOS and be done with it.
But things like systemd, wireless drivers, etc. - there, I don't think there is a good argument because it is easy to set up a system and make an image that you then use as your base for creating new VMs for the server.
As someone who uses CentOS on the desktop quite a bit, I am glad that RHEL / CentOS does pay attention to the needs of use desktop users.
I use to use CentOS on the server and Fedora on the desktop, and then, RHEL/CentOS as a server OS made sense to me.
But Fedora is too bleeding edge for my liking now, and CentOS is the Linux distribution I recommend for desktop use.
So no, I don't think it should target servers at the expense of the desktop users.
Just my two cents, don't mean to stir the pot, just giving my opinion.