[shawnz]

Contrary to some of the other replies here, I agree with you that there is no point in running CentOS on its own merits. Those looking for old software could just use Debian or Ubuntu LTS. But there is an important use case you're leaving out: Developing and testing software for running on RHEL. You probably don't need to purchase RHEL licenses with enterprise support just for running on your development machines.

The point of CentOS is (or was) not to just be a free, stable, rpm-based linux distribution. The point was to be bug-for-bug compatible with RHEL.