Everyone seems very focussed upon Debian in this thread, even though the thread started out discussing all distributions.
It might be worth everyone's while remembering that Debian is not the be-all and end-all here, even though it did have a massive hoo-hah. The processes in other distributions were markedly different.
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11834348
* http://jdebp.eu./FGA/debian-systemd-packaging-hoo-hah.html
The first link doesn't seem to support redhat strongarming.
Arch rc maintainer decided to drop rc for systemd.
The linked evil-poettering intermezzo seems to be irrelevant and strawman-ish too.
I'd like to read this part about RHEL throwing their weight around on the Debian lists. Given your implication is that Debian was clearly "forced" to adopting it, I imagine the relevant evidence shouldn't be hard to find.
(Alternatively, you could actually ask other Debian maintainers yourself, like Josh, in this thread how it went. But you already did that and it didn't seem his narrative aligned with yours, so...)