I've gone to FreeBSD for now on my personal dev box, I'm a real sucker for a dead simple /etc/rc.conf like Arch used to have and their system philosophy seems more in line with my own anyways.

Very glad to hear we have a major binary distro like Debian committing to init system flexibility this strongly. I just hope it's true. The people who are hesitant can experiment and stay where they are for now, moving only when it's actually desired rather than forced.