I think ubuntu has done a decent job with universe by and large. I find it in much better shape overall than epel. A good way to judge the health of these auxiliary repos is to look at the age of chromium. Ubuntu is generally good with patching at least security issues in universe. epel is still running behind by a month or two despite the security disclosures. So RH ought to take a page from Canonical's book when it comes to epel and make it a more official thing than the entirely community driven thing it is right now.