Petty politics aside, it seems to me that the comparisons between Systemd and Upstart are analogous to those between launchd and Solaris' SMF. The crux of the

Petty politics aside, it seems to me that the comparisons between Systemd and Upstart are analogous to those between launchd and Solaris' SMF. The crux of the comparison is whether init should explicitly follow a dependency tree or resolve dependencies dynamically. The other complaints fall out of that concern: in following the launchd model of dynamic resolution, systemd is forced to bundle in complex features. On OSX launchd serves as a hub from day one, so coordinating IPC and mount-watching is not so foreign. Similarly, this hub functionality restricts modularity, although launchd doesn't subsume autofs fully. The reality here is that we're looking at a philosophical difference. While religious wars start over which is the "right" view, I'm unconvinced there is one. Much as SMF and launchd are comparably functional, so will upstart and systemd be.