As indicated by @Hooverdan our new development targeted is Leap15.1 because it has much newer btrfs back-port and btrfs is supported by the openSUSE developers.
So yes if you wish to contribute to the development it is required to use an openSUSE base, ideally both Leap15.1 and Tumbleweed but mainly Leap15.1 currrently. But also all changes must be tested on CentOS. But our openSUSE notes are currently better.
The following is our up-to-date guide for developers for this newer platform: