The question remains, what do home directories have to do with init, at all? Okay so Poettering wants to "fix" home directories - is there any reason to couple that with systemd, beyond the fact that systemd is his baby (and point of leverage over the rest of the system)? There are dozens of other examples - network configuration? syslog? cron? This is what I mean by 'OS middleware' - systemd is basically a distro, and a radical one at that. It is aiming to replace huge swathes of stuff that no one except seemingly Poettering believes is broken in the first place. I think distros would have been more hesitant to adopt systemd as an "init system" if this roadmap had been clear upfront.

<conspiracy>

I have heard the opinion ventured that systemd is actually a power play by Red Hat to introduce an API layer between userland and the kernel - one controlled by Red Hat. It's not implausible - as Red Hat is funded by selling consultancy services, they have a financial incentive to convert as much of Linux as possible into Red Hat Linux.

</conspiracy>