I don't know who the "anti-systemd folks" you're talking to are, but I haven't seen that. I see several different projects using several different inits, includ

I don't know who the "anti-systemd folks" you're talking to are, but I haven't seen that. I see several different projects using several different inits, including, yes, "classic init". The only folks I hear talking about One True Init (which will also take over completely unrelated functions, poorly) are the systemd folks. Also, it sounds like you're unaware of the distinction, but the BSDs have never had sysvinit-style runlevels. You can kinda hack them in if you like, but there's no native notion of runlevel; you get single-user or multi-user.