You are mixing concepts that are at different levels. Free software is an answer to an ethical / political issue (user rights). Systemd is an answer to a tech

You are mixing concepts that are at different levels. Free software is an answer to an ethical / political issue (user rights). Systemd is an answer to a technical problem (how to manage system services, to simplify a lot). And to each their own. It's good you found something that suits you in Devuan, but it has never been easier for me to tweak my systems since systemd landed on the distributions I use. Writing a service is a breeze, including free software I wrote. Things are fast at last. It took over for reasons, and I think those reasons are technical excellence and easier maintenance burden for distributions. I'm very happy with systemd. I don't feel like it "suppresses aspects of free software development" at all.