This is a common complaint about Canonical. But your post is misleading at best. upstart forged a new path at a time when systemd didn't exist. Ubuntu pioneere

This is a common complaint about Canonical. But your post is misleading at best. upstart forged a new path at a time when systemd didn't exist. Ubuntu pioneered it in order to solve a specific problem for which no other solution existed at the time (desktop boot speed). You can complain that Ubuntu has not switched to systemd if you wish, but it is systemd that went down its own path, dragging other upstream projects with it (eg. udev). Red Hat switched to upstart initially, and has now decided to drop it in favour of a new project (systemd).