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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: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 29 2014, @12:04AM
Have you seen what has happened to Firefox? Have you seen what has happened to GNOME? Those are two projects that have been utterly destroyed thanks to stupidity like we're seeing with systemd. It's utter, utter stupidity, and the end result is always the same: the project that's infected ends up dead.
Firefox is well under 10% of the market now. GNOME 3 is a complete disaster. They're dead projects, for all intents and purposes. Maybe they'll still put out releases, but they've only got a very small number of users remaining.
Nobody is crying wolf here. Systemd is a serious problem, and it looks like it's going to tear apart the Debian project. If Debian does manage to survive, it will be a severely wounded project. There are many long-time Debian users who are feeling very betrayed over how this inferior technology has been forced upon them, and they will move to another distro that doesn't make such asinine decisions about such critical software.
The only projects that are going to win out of all of this are Gentoo and FreeBSD, and maybe Slackware. They're the only ones showing any sense in this matter.