> I don't really understand this feature creep argument against systemd. I mean, this is not like this is a feature included in PID1, it is a new binary so a separate feature (and I am pretty sure that you can choose to not compile it too if you don't want, like almost any other systemd feature with the exception of systemd itself and journald).

AFAIK systemd and the different components has so many internal dependencies on each other than not much works if you try to pull things apart. You can remove systemd completely, yes, but try to only have systemd as an init system and nothing works!