[capableweb]

Well, to be fair, the guideline ended up being A) Support systemd and B) Explore alternatives if you want to. In this case, the author chose to do A and not B. That's following the high-level direction and not overriding anything.

[rleigh]

I don't believe it is following the high-level direction at all. It's completely counter to it.

Dropping existing working support is deliberately and intentionally stopping alternatives from working. Refusing to consider help from others to maintain this support is deliberately and intentionally preventing alternatives from being supported.

[capableweb]

Seems you're right, according to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24493214 (and https://bugs.debian.org/746715) which states "That includes merging reasonable contributions, and not reverting existing support without a compelling reason" which I missed when first reading about it. Thanks :)