I don't like the age verification thing either, but all systemd did was add a field for it, it's still up to your distro to use it.
What I have an issue with is apps making themselves dependent on systemd like KDE is doing. https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1qi9vo5/comment/o0pzvq...
It is interesting that Linux is far more widely used than alternatives that are not fragmented (e.g. FreeBSD) and has not standardised on one distro. Different people have different needs and preferences. People using Debian, Alpine, and NixOS are unlikely to agree on what they want.
cPanel had to maintain its own unified API above a slew of other interfaces, while Cockpit benefits from a unified OS API. And we're only getting started, we still have a long way to go.
Yes I love the diversity of the open source ecosystem, I love that people are free to create their own distros without systemd. But I love my distros with systemd too much to switch.
It really doesn't need to provide a package manager. Systemd already basically has all the knobs for launching services in their own little world (`RootImage=`, `RootDirectory=` and recently `RootMStack=` (for a de-OCI'd layered container images)) or systemd-portabled. There are probably more things I forgot.
Businesses in general hate the MIT license because anything they contribute can be used by their competitors without opening the source.
I personally like this about FreeBSD. I hate the way Linux has been infiltrated by all the business suits and it's now an OS with billions of dollars of interests pulling at it. Look at the linux foundation board, it's all suits, they're not community guys. Or all the contributions that are mostly done by people doing it as part of their work at big tech.
In my opinion the big tech companies' interests are completely opposite to my own, I don't believe in 'win-win' when it comes to enterprise participation in open source. As such Linux is not a great option for me, but for many people it is because they don't care so much about that.
FreeBSD isn't really a monoculture either by the way. There are many different distros there too, they are just really fringe because FreeBSD itself is fringe.
That didn’t work perfectly, but it did work to some extent.
For graphical stuff, or stuff which wants to interact more deeply with the system, you need so much more than a common C API and rudimentary shell specification.