Assuming this actually going somewhere, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it might allow us to get over those intense - and usually pointless -

Assuming this actually going somewhere, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it might allow us to get over those intense - and usually pointless - arguments (to put it politely) about systemd. (Personally, I don't have very strong feelings about systemd, but I get the impression it could use some time to mature before becoming the centerpiece of a GNU/Linux system.) If the fork gave people the choice between "Debian with systemd" and "Debian without systemd", and if that was all there was to it, that would be really sweet. But given the circumstances of the fork, it is not exactly clear how the two distros would coordinate their development, possibly resulting in eventual divergence. Also, if the project catches on, this might lead to a kind of brain drain on Debian, replacing one - up until now - great distribution with two less impressive ones. (This is of course a worst-case scenario. There might be, three years from now, a lot of sharing of code and people between the two distros. I sure hope so.) It is surely a very interesting development, but it remains to be seen whether this is good or bad news or even news at all.