> My understanding (I believe detailed in the article) is that Debian, at least, chose systemd because they were forced to
This (and much of the article) is incorrect. Debian went through an extensive evaluation process at the time, over the course of 4 months, considering several different init systems, and chose systemd based on this detailed technical evaluation. That evaluation also considered sysvinit, openrc, and upstart. All of that evaluation occurred publicly, and is archived on Debian's mailing lists and bug-tracking system.
This (and much of the article) is incorrect. Debian went through an extensive evaluation process at the time, over the course of 4 months, considering several different init systems, and chose systemd based on this detailed technical evaluation. That evaluation also considered sysvinit, openrc, and upstart. All of that evaluation occurred publicly, and is archived on Debian's mailing lists and bug-tracking system.