yahoo/Openstack-DevstackPy — comment on commit 1df3eae3faa832d1fc419015544688487b0f1fbc
File: devstack/packaging/yum.py line 67
By apevec:

This is actually a feature, EPEL must not conflict with RHEL, so python-webob1.0 installs newer version in parallel.
/usr/share/doc/python-webob1.0-1.0.8/README.Fedora describes how to use it and EPEL openstack-* packages are patched that way.
This of course doesn't work when running from git like devstack does, so your symlink workaround is fine I guess.