I don't know about all that... ElasticSearch I don't have experience with, but CentOS is an example of a project I don't like in a bunch of ways - and I believe (on faith and anecdotal evidence mind you) that developers didn't like it nor choose to use it unless, for some reason, they needed the RHEL compatibility, which means that they need some tie-in to a corporate-commerical-only flavor of Linux.

So, I would argue, CentOS doesn't have an organic raison d'etre. If had one, it would be very difficult to "kill" it.