There have been a number of recent conversations on the developer list and this list about CentOS. My initial thought was why not have CentOS and SL merge. Since they have different goals I can understand the reason not to. So my next question is, has no corporate entity offered to sponsor full time people to work on CentOS? It seems like a lot of companies use CentOS for various things. I can't believe no one is willing to help speed development by paying for people to build full time. Has this subject come up before?
As far as I can tell, it is as simple as this:-
The volunteers that create CentOS like things the way it is and it isn't likely to change. We seen it said a number of times, if we don't like it then go somewhere else. I suggest there might be room for another rebuild project that is open to commercially sponsored, i.e. somewhere else. This would n't be a 'rival' because its aims would be different. I'll be honest though, I don't realistically see enough money coming in to put people full-time onto it, though, when you consider market rate for the skills required.