Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier has been a part of the Linux community for decades;
he is now using that experience to write a series on “Red Hat and the Clone
Wars”. The first two episodes were Red
Hat and the Clone Wars and A
history of the early 2000s Linux landscape; the latest is The
dawn of CentOS:

In 2009, the main project admin for CentOS went radio
silent. CentOS had been spun up in the wild west days of the
Internet, when it seemed totally fine to let one person hold the
domain, communications channels, and funds. Oops.

Folks depending on CentOS suddenly had a Come to Jesus moment. What
happens if your production systems depend on a project where the
main admin is AWOL and you have no plan for that?

Source: LWN.net – Brockmeier: Red Hat and the Clone Wars III: The dawn of CentOS