[pas]

> GNU has not

GNU? GNU ... GNU what? I never heard of any ( https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html )

> Second, the critique against systemd is substantial and solid enough to stand on its own regardless of popularity.

Sure, just as the responses to those. And thus the trade off was/is acceptable to the maintainers of distros that eventually adopted systemd.

There are too many random shell scripts everywhere in the world (not just the Linux world), systemd's unit files are a big step in the right direction, even if their code and architecture is a dumpster fire (low level linux plumbing written in C is usually that).