Not really. It works pretty much in the same way as .deb, with YUM repositories doing the same job as APT repositories.

The main difference is that it's slightly easier to build a .rpm package from scratch than it is a .deb, but this usually becomes a liability as things like dependency checking are less covered. .RPM-based distributions often do things more or less like RedHat and Oracle do in terms of initialization scripts, services etc, whereas .DEB-based distributions do things like Debian and Ubuntu (and Maemo) do.

This said, the problem is not the format, but rather the effort required to switch from one to another. Things like the autobuilder etc will have to be rewritten.