I suspect he would have been right out front on integrating these new ideas into yum; he had a long history of pushing yum forward (which is why it became the standard for RHEL and Fedora despite Red Hat having developed one of their own; but, it was clear to everyone, including Red Hat, that up2date was inferior in every way to yum). So, I tend to think if he were still around, we wouldn't be talking about something replacing yum, we would instead be talking about new features in yum. I think it is unfortunate that people felt the need to fork rather than enhance.