SystemD makes SMF look good^Wbetter
That's true. My objection to it isn't the complexity in terms of using it. My objection is partly the complexity of its implementation, and mostly the fact that it does far, far more than it should in terms of replacing critical system components.
If they really had to (in their minds) rewrite the init, they could've just stuck to effectively porting/rewriting SMF and stopped there. Still, at least wrangling with SMF one can think "it could be worse, it could be SystemD".
Biting the hand that feeds IT
