And there you exactly pinpoint the problem. The FLOSS movement used to be about caring about other people and projects. RedHat* and its employees only give a damn about their use-cases and the rest of the "community" can go to hell.
Which, of course is a logical stance to take for any corporation, however how easily everyone goes along with it is just appalling.
*this, of course, goes for every corporate entity, though some work with the community better than others.
> The FLOSS movement used to be about caring about other people and projects.
Was it? I thought the primary driver was "I had a problem, this is the fix for my problem, maybe it helps you. I share this solution, you share yours.". Which basically holds true nowadays: Systemd solves Redhats problems. If it solves enough problems for enough people then it will prevail and other people might enhance it to fix their problems as well if they deem it a viable foundation. If it doesn't, then systemd will remain a niche solution that fixes redhats problems - which would totally be fine with me.
Given that we have the discussion on the debian list I'm inclined to believe that at least enough people think systemd is it to give it a push. If you don't like it stick with what you like or roll your own, but don't bitch and moan about redhat building a software that suits their use-case primarily and giving it away for free.
It would be nice if that held true. The problem isn't that RedHat developed a solution for their own problem, it's that their crowd are incredibly vocal about other people adopting it, even to the point of verbal attacks and attempted character assassinations against people who disagree with their stated aims. And of course, they will never admit publicly that systemd is developed to solve RedHat's problems, but will try to convince people that they have more noble aims, to solve the problems of the wider community. It's rhetoric. If they just dumped the software and let it's technical qualities speak for themselves, there wouldn't be so much drama.
And yet they do. They pay enough developers working on enough big projects to have the power to force adoption (not to mention the sponsoring of various other things, like infrastructure). By making it a hard dependency of Gnome for example (which in itself has turned into a 3rd-party developer hostile project, but that is another discussion entirely, but if you care, go read IgnorantGuru's bloggins)
So they're using end-user pressure (no systemd = no Gnome) to force adoption.
Which, of course is a logical stance to take for any corporation, however how easily everyone goes along with it is just appalling.
*this, of course, goes for every corporate entity, though some work with the community better than others.