Systemd was criticizes right from the start for the same things that it is criticized now. No misunderstanding. No bad timing. No tragedy present.

> People don't like change

Wrong! People love change if it is an improvement. People don't like change if things get worse.

> Services, System configuration, daemons, etc are separate distinct things and need distinct C code to be managed

Nope. They are essentially the same thing and should be dealt with by small scripts.

> It does not really violate the Unix philosophy

Nobody really knows what "Unix philosophy" actually is. Therefore it does not matter if it gets "violated". However systemd definitely violates my and many others taste for good software. It is bad taste.

> It's not bloated and monolithic because it's not one binary

The stupidest argument ever. If you have a lot of tightly interdependent binaries that don't make any sense to exist outside of systemd you have a monolithic system were simple nuclear parts are not replaceable with alternatives. Besides from that: Its f*in bloated as hell.

> It's not as buggy as people claim

It is. Besides, the real problem is not the number of bugs, the prolem is getting rid of bugs. Recompiling C code just to get your init working is really a world of nightmares.

> People don't like systemd because they don't like Lennard Poettering

Most only care about technology and systemd is bad technology. Nobody cares about Poettering.

> UNIX is dead

Hearing that coming from a FreeBSD developer? Do his BSD buddy's agree? Why doesn't he switch to Windows? Sounds like conman to me. Remind me to never install FreeBSD. A big part of what made Linux great are the things that were borrowed from Unix and Plan9.

To make it short: The dude loves change and he wants FreeBSD to go in the direction of what Windows is today. I love change and I want Linux to go into the direction of Plan9.