Ironically enough, sysvinit and sysv-rc weren't particularly good on the whole "small and separated" aspect [1]. This has been known for a while, and a lot of w

Ironically enough, sysvinit and sysv-rc weren't particularly good on the whole "small and separated" aspect [1]. This has been known for a while, and a lot of work has been done to address the problem domain, much of it understudied and not well known [2]. I don't think Red Hat had all that much of a stake initially. Kay Sievers was actually a SUSE employee at the time systemd was conceived for public release, IIRC. Red Hat's interests seem far more directed at cloud and containers (see: Project Atomic) than workstations, and indeed the direction systemd has been heading reflects that. [1] http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/system-5-rc-problems.html http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/sy... [2] http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/ http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/