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Controversy is nothing new when it comes to systemd. Many people find this new Linux init system to be inherently flawed in most ways, yet it is still gaining traction with major distros like Arch Linux, openSUSE, Fedora, and soon both Ubuntu and Debian GNU/Linux. The adoption of systemd for Debian 8 "Jessie" has been particularly fraught with strife and animosity.
Some have described the systemd adoption process as having been a "coup", while others are vowing to stick with Debian 7 as long as possible before moving to another distro. Others are so upset by what they see as a complete betrayal of the Debian and open source communities that there is serious discussion about forking Debian. Regardless of one's stance toward systemd, it cannot be argued that it has become one of the most divisive and disruptive changes in the long history of the Debian project, threatening to destroy both the project and the community that has built up around it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hash14 on Sunday September 28 2014, @09:53PM
The problem isn't just limited to the awful technical and design decisions which went into making it. Though systemd is rife with poor decision-making and design (which I will not get into), the biggest problem to me is what it means for the future of Linux and the Free Software environment.
I personally have no qualms with _using_ systemd and am currently using a distro running it (which will be wiped in a few weeks and replaced with Slackware, Gentoo, or Freebsd). It's buggy, but that's the price you pay for user-friendliness.
I was largely on the fence about systemd for a while - I knew a lot of people didn't like it, but wasn't sure if they were being purists or pedants. But now that Debian has been overtaken by the systemd mafia and the absurd political games taking control of the project and its technical decisions, I can see that it's the centerpiece of Red Hat taking a page from Redmond's book and using Embrace, Extend, Extinguish to eliminate all competitors. And the longer we delay in fighting it, the more hopeless the fight will become because systemd is such an important player in this vertical integration scheme.
It's frankly shocking to me to see this happening in the Linux world, but I fear very much what will happen to the kernel, the popular DEs, and the myriad userspace applications which will become unusable simply because I choose to do something different from what Lennart Poettering tells me to do. In short, systemd is nothing less than a way for Lennart to take over the Free Software ecosystem (via udev, dependencies, etc.) and play Steve Jobs - you will get what I will give you, you will be told that it's the best thing you could possibly want, and (worst of all), dissent will be silenced.
The Free Software ecosystem doesn't need a Steve Jobs. It does not need to become corrupted by Red Hat's commercial interests. And if it does, then we need a way to separate ourselves out from that - if we don't, then we risk losing everything that Linux has become up to this point.
While this explanation may not pertain to you and your uses, I frankly think it would be a shame to see projects like BSD fade (or even disappear entirely) because they chose to not go down the same path of poor design that systemd decided to become. And I don't feel like I should be forced to use what other developers and maintainers decide simply because it was technically designed to preclude those alternatives.