No-one was forced to migrate to GCC or bash, and they render systems unbootable a lot less often than Pottering does.

No one is forced to anything. If you don't like systemd you are free to use whatever you are able to maintain yourself or pay someone else to do so.

systemd is quintessential "embrace, extend, and extinguish".

If you don't like the word "force", we can use "coerce" instead.

Here, so nobody can force you to use systemd: http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Reasonably we can conclude that we are in fact forced to use systemd.

if you want to use a modern production ready distro for servers you cannot look further than: ubuntu, debian, RHEL/CentOS, and probably SuSE (although declining).

If you're an american company you're very likely using CentOS already and if you're a European company you're very likely using debian already, and there is little wiggle room there.

So, yes, my standards body ensures that systemd is inflicted on my systems and it's a lot more hassle to move away from debian right now than to embrace systemd for all it's warts.

"nice distro you have there, shame if something was to happen to it..."

That "death threat" was a bad joke made on a IRC channel after hours, after several on the channel had spent the day trying to debug some issues caused by changes in the most recent systemd release at the time.

On top of that he is a loudmouth and head of a controversial project, that is basically a big neon sign these days for attracting the "gamergate" hive.