Seems you don’t know how anything on Linux

What makes you think that is what they think? They referenced other people. They didn't make any claims themselves or made any indications that they agree with those "flipping out" (who misunderstand).

I read it as the opposite. They know and criticize those who don't and flip out because of that.

Just because one systemd dev prepared something to be optionally used for a stupid law, doesn't mean anyone using Linux is forced to do that Seems you don't know how anything on Linux, and it's ecosystem, works, if you believe that

This is disingenuous at best.

Sure, its 'just' a single text field that 'optionally' can be used. until it isn't.

SystemD itself is a perfect example of this. Sure you have choice in theory, but in practice its a wildly different story. Name one mainstream Linux distro that can be used for casual day to day use, ranging from doing taxes to playing Steam games that does not use SystemD.

A lot of people drew issue with SystemD when it came out and as time progressed, but the number of fully supported core distros that do not use SystemD is zero.

Nobody's concerns were considered, and not one uses Runit, InitRC, or even just refused to move on from SysVInit, unless you count Gentoo. Debian is SystemD. Arch is SystemD. Fedora is SystemD. And so are almost all their derivatives.

In order to get away from SystemD, you have to switch to forks that intentionally go out of their way to make it happen like Artix. Arch's wiki page literally tells you that you can have any init system as long as it's SystemD.

You are left to rewrite entire core system components yourself and maintain them if you really want to make it happen.

So yea, you technically have a choice, but not really.