The maturity of systemd is at the root of the problem here. I switched (even for ArchLinux standards) relatively early and since then I could see how things changed continuously. There are two factors here: I appreciate active development of software and I would like things to stay compatible with previous releases at a minor cost to "progress". It is hard to get both in such a complex design space. Most of the problems are hard to predict and only come up as soon as there is active use of the system and if you never go public, there will never be active use.
Overall, jumping on the systemd bandwagon was done prematurely (at least by ArchLinux) and I think the large software packages should just give it another few months before migrating. systemd solves a lot of problems now and developers want problems to go as away before they become a feature or to pervasive to the codebase, but a little restraint might to a lot of good here.
There has to come a point where systemd announces feature completeness and stable interfaces so everybody can use it as a standard and then everybody can go for broad use and acceptance. I would hope that this gives the smaller players a chance to catch-up and much needed safety when investing resources into their own implementations.
>The maturity of systemd is at the root of the problem here.
That is pretty much what I came in here to say. It seems like OpenBSD is trying to have it both ways: Include all the latest and greatest toys and still thoroughly audit everything that changes between releases. But it's new toys, secure, cheap. Pick two.
Is it really the end of the world if OpenBSD bears a closer resemblance to Debian Stable for the sake of security? Why is 'latest Gnome' a requirement? Just stick with older versions of everything until the new APIs stabilize and mature.
But the problems with systemd aren't an isolated case, and they aren't technical, they're political. And political problems generally don't get better when a technical solution is applied; in this case, waiting it out just silences OpenBSD's voice in the potential discussion. So I'm glad they're making an effort to engage the community and look for alternatives to the political problem.
I'm deliberately not saying exactly what the political problem is – I'm not "framing" it one way or another.
Overall, jumping on the systemd bandwagon was done prematurely (at least by ArchLinux) and I think the large software packages should just give it another few months before migrating. systemd solves a lot of problems now and developers want problems to go as away before they become a feature or to pervasive to the codebase, but a little restraint might to a lot of good here.
There has to come a point where systemd announces feature completeness and stable interfaces so everybody can use it as a standard and then everybody can go for broad use and acceptance. I would hope that this gives the smaller players a chance to catch-up and much needed safety when investing resources into their own implementations.