The main issue is that nobody is able to come up with anything better. I use systemd because it made my job hugely easier and soved many problems. The main guy is an asshole but his work is good when you use it as he intended, which kind of is the point of open source.

If you don't like it you fork and do your own thing, until now nobody bothered, and this is telling.

Poettering did respectable work in snarky fields like audio and init nobody wanted to do something in and everybody complained about. I respect that despite he behaving like a spoiled asshole