Seconded I completely back the idea to avoid a fork when ever possible. It's possible to maintain systemd and just let it to do the init stuff. Syslog and other daemons can be implemented independently, as for example in a classic Unix way. SuSE Linux Enterprise 12 has gone this way just now. Please, Debian folks, consider it! It's worth the struggle. Thanks for your efforts!
-- André Kiepe Systems Engineer & Training Consultant
