I'm not disputing that he doesn't think the issues are major, as I said, he's usually pretty ambivalent about what runs on the kernel, so they're not issues he cares about. On the flip side, I do care what is running because I have to manage and support it.

I do wonder if we're talking at cross purposes though. You seem to mostly be talking about the systemd init system, I'm mostly talking about all the other bits it, as a sort of umbrella project, tries to encompass. I don't much like the init system, I prefer to be able to explicitly set the ordering of the steps, rather than having them inferred, and I prefer shell script that I can test to unit files, but it mostly works ok. So does every other init system though, so it's not a selling point.

As I said, the big problem is around how they've tried to do everything, much of it less well than what they're replacing. Yes, you can build a system that uses systemd-init and none of the other components, but that still drags in a load of other dependencies, so you might as well use a different init that's smaller and cleaner.

We came close to the 'systemd apocalypse' recently, when distros hooked the systemd library into openssh without understanding just how bloated it is and how many poorly monitored dependencies it brought in. It was just luck that the right person spotted a slight change in timing and investigated.

Ultimately I suppose it comes down to the level you interact with your systems at. If you just want to install your OS, a few packages they directly support and let it get on with it, then you probably neither know nor care that you run systemd, and that's great. On the other hand, in my experience, when you try to push the system past that and do anything more customized you start running into the sharp edges and misfeatures on the various systemd components.