[marcosdumay]

Yet another approach is exposing internal state.

That way you turn a very complex system into a set of much simpler artificial systems that you can control the interaction.

On your example, that would mean having different kinds of configuration options that go for each of those scenarios, but still all on the same software.

One can argue that systemd tries this (for example, there are many kinds of services). But in many cases, it does the complete opposite of this and reducing scope.

Still, I don't think init systems are a wicked problem (and so, it doesn't need advanced solutions to managing complexity). The wickedness is caused by the systemd's decision to do everything.