I understand the pushback against it being "not unix" philosophically, since it's a large system instead of many small systems working together.

At the same time systemd is still kind of just a collection of config/script files. And as annoying as it is, the perennial "well just contribute to / code for the thing you like instead" mantra applies. init.d is falling out of favor with maintainers because they find it comparatively harder to maintain and update.

I have the vague feeling that a lot of the people that would care the most have moved to NixOS or esoteric stuff like it.