For most users, it wouldn't matter anyway, and I'd argue that that's true even for a lot of the sysadmins. But the argument had a few layers more. Quite a few people agreed that the current init system wasn't exactly the bee's knees, but disagreed on what to use to replace it (systemd, upstart, heck, even Apple's launchd).
There was a rather vocal group that didn't actually care that much about the specific implementation either, but but wanted something in the "Unix spirit", i.e. consisting of a more modular base of small components. Systemd pretty much fails that test as much as humanly possible without being J2EE.
And it all ended with a bad debate on the Debian mailing list. Can't remember all the details, but the Grand Poobahs were accused of acting a bit too grand.
So it wasn't just about the technical merits themselves, but also about philosophy and policy.
As a dev/sysadmin, systemd is barely noticeable when you think if it as an init system. When you look at the cool tricks it can do, it's more like its part of the OS than something living on top of it, providing services you'd expect a kernel to provide (albeit not a very Unix-like one, which is what makes people so mad about it).
It's a large and complex beast, doing a lot of different things that make sense in a modern server environment.
There was a rather vocal group that didn't actually care that much about the specific implementation either, but but wanted something in the "Unix spirit", i.e. consisting of a more modular base of small components. Systemd pretty much fails that test as much as humanly possible without being J2EE.
And it all ended with a bad debate on the Debian mailing list. Can't remember all the details, but the Grand Poobahs were accused of acting a bit too grand.
So it wasn't just about the technical merits themselves, but also about philosophy and policy.