I avoid, like the plague, discussions about systemd purely because of the FUD, emotional outbursts, and general scaremongering that I see in discussions about systemd. This time I'm not going to avoid it because of all the groups I take part in this one (and one other DE group) appear to be very level headed and talk facts.
Ok here's my take on systemd and Debian. Debian is the 2nd oldest of the still current distros. It has remained a cornerstone of the Linux community and a parent to 300+ distros for many years because of the good choices made by the Debian community. You don't get a position of strength like Debian has in the FOSS world with a track record of making poor choices. Because of this I, personally, am willing to wait and watch how the systemd and Debian thing pans out. I personally do not see any problems simply because of Debian's track record. There are much greater technical minds than me making the
decisions, Linus Torvolds himself is letting systemd into Linux so there
must be decent technical merit for it.
In my systems, I have more than 20 Debian installs and most are Testing and Sid, I have not had one issue with systemd. Even when it was pushed into Testing and install on my machines through a normal upgrade there were no problems. I remarked on LinuxQuestions only the other day in one of the few systemd threads that I have said anything in recently that with systemd my machines boot and shutdown quicker as well.
For Cobber, because I am the only one working on it, I am trusting Debian, its developers, and technical committees. I don't have the time to change Debian for Cobber in order to keep systemd out.
There are now 2 versions of the current LFS on with and one without systemd. I plan on building both to see how well things go.
I am, personally, yet to see anything convincing that says to me that systemd is the problem for Linux that many say it is. Most discussions turn into character assasinations and at one point someone said to me "Make your choice and make the right one or be judged by the community". That to me is excessive and plays on emotion rather than technical merit. I know some people won't agree with me, and that is their right and I respect that but the problem I have seen in most discussions is the anti-systemd group do not respect those who don't agree with them.