This is a common fault. Not knowing the history and what has already been done long since is an error exemplified in this discussion on this very page, in fact. (One place to start learning from is http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/ .)

But in fairness Davin McCall has done more than most. There is a short writeup of xyr opinions of various systems, that comes with the Dinit source code. It gets a number of things wrong about several of the systems and does not go into as much depth as, say, the Debian Technical Committee members did. But it does show that M. McCall has at least looked, just as xe states.