Considering there's been ~15 of them, I doubt anyone has ever evaluated them comprehensively except post facto in light of the systemd integration.

Yeah the most documented such evaluation, the Debian process, seemed to only evaluate sysv, upstart and systemd (openrc was briefly mentioned but quickly dismissed).

The rest seems to have been executive decisions (with or without a "deal with it" meme accompanying), often by people already involved with systemd development.

I haven't evaluated all of the previous attempts since that would consume more time than I have available. Can you provide a comparison or some insights into why they're worse?

I can't comment on all of them, but I've dealt with a bunch. I'm out enjoying Halloween right now but if I remember on the morning I'll follow up.

If you get time that would be neat, I'm sure others would appreciate it too. I've heard good things about djb's daemontools from a few friends and colleagues but never had the chance to try it and if you have any insight on that one I'd really appreciate that.