> One of the main problems was the speed with which systemd was rolled out on all the major Linux distros, despite it being relatively immature and very controversial at that.

I agree this is a big part of the problem, and appreciate it being raised.

> All of this adds up to a storm of controversy that the systemd people mostly brought upon themselves

I think Systemd comports itself as project exactly like most free software projects do, including Linux. Linus creates a template and then rages about how he doesn't like it.