Write a Letter to Redhat About systemd

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) incorporated systemd as their default and only init system in 2014. Soon after, perhaps with some persuasion from Red Hat and its allies, Debian adopted systemd as its default init system, and many Debian Derived distros, including all the Ubuntus, followed suit. Starting in 2014, this caused extensive protest from many in the Linux community, for reasons such as:

Massively entangled and monolithic architecture.
Systemd installation is incompatible with other init systems, requiring exceptional measures to replace. All other inits are pretty much plug-compatible with each other.
Systemd usurps many non-init functionalities incompatibly.
Systemd currently (9/27/2019) has 1130 open and 4199 closed issues. Many open issues are from 2015 and 2016.

Now some Debian users and developers are having buyer's remorse about systemd. And Red Hat has been bought by IBM, a very different corporation with very different goals and strategy. It's very possible that IBM doesn't have the former Red Hat's allegiance to systemd, and might already be thinking of replacing systemd with a better init system. Whether they are or not, a few hundred letters from Linux user might influence their decision. Red Hat's business model ran better with a complex and buggy Linux: That might not be true of IBM.

If you dislike systemd, two positive actions you can take are: 1) Write IBM telling them your opinion (with reasons), and 2) Recruit others to write letters to IBM. The following are a few possible talking-points:

Systemd is complex to the point of brittleness, requiring at least five highly paid Red Hat developers (Lennart Poettering, Kay Sievers, Harald Hoyer, Tom Gundersen, and David Herrmann) to fix its bugs and keep it running.
Systemd is too complex and brittle for efficient cloud and IBM Multicloud infrastructure foundation, barring massive continuous maintenance.
Systemd-dependent Linux is very different from the Linux that IBM has built its business on since the beginning of the century.
IBM should consider having Red Hat switch from systemd to a first-class init system such as s6/s6-rc.
s6/s6-rc is a relatively simple and low maintenance init that offers or can easily be made to offer all the truly valuable features of systemd.
s6/s6-rc is well maintained by a single person, so unlike systemd it doesn't require an army of highly paid developers.
OpenRC and runit are also excellent candidates to replace systemd.
Contrary to rumor, there's no need to use the 30 year old sysv-init as an alternative to systemd.

URLs to Back Up Your Assertions

Here are a few URLs to back up the assertions you make in your letter:

S6 init system: https://skarnet.org/software/s6/
s6-rc: https://skarnet.org/software/s6-rc/
s6-linux-init: https://skarnet.org/software/s6-linux-init/
OpenRC: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:OpenRC
Runit: http://smarden.org/runit/

Recruiting Others to Write Letters

Writing a letter to IBM is wonderful. Following that up by recruiting others to do the same is even better. The more letters they receive, the more receptive they'll be to our ideas.

When you recruit, some of your fellow anti-systemd people will tell you letters to IBM will do no good. That's OK. There have always been, and always will be, folks who surrender before the first shot is fired. Just go on and find folks willing to take more hands-on responsibility for the future of Free Software. A few hundred letters will make IBM notice, and please remember, IBM might already be considering dumping systemd: Systemd was Red Hat's path to success, not IBM's.

Please remember that the systemd project has yet more plans to widen the chasm between systemd and sans-systemd Linux, which will require much more work from Devuan and other sans-systemd distros. Your work writing and recruiting just might be of huge benefit to Devuan and other sans-systemd distros.

Contacts Within IBM

I'll be glad to serve as a central information point for this letter writing campaign. If you find other contacts, please feel free to write to them and please email me with those contacts and contact information.

So far I've found two people I think might be relevant:

Mr. Todd Moore
VP IBM Open Technologies
Building 045
11400 Burnet Rd
Austin, TX, 78758
Ms. Virginia M. Rometty
Chairman, President and CEO
One New Orchard Road,
Armonk, New York 10504

As people send me more contacts and more accurate contact info, I'll incorporate that into the preceding list.