Bitcoin uses the coinbase stuff to hand out the initial distribution.  Ripple XRP is handed out by a single corporation.  A single corporation in control of 80% of the currency is a textbook definition of central authority.

I understand maaku and others like to celebrate the flexibility that comes from separating the coinbase function from transaction verification (and that's fine as long as they don't minimize the costs); regardless, it is simply false to claim Ripple is decentralized given how they've chosen to centrally bootstrap the initial distribution.

I suppose if the corp. ultimately succeeds in distributing this sum before running into any major problems you could then genuinely claim there is no central authority or central point of failure.  But only then.