If there was a portable implementation of namespaces that was implemented by both Linux and BSDs, then sure systemd could be made more portable. Otherwise the only reason OpenRC is more portable is that it does not isolate services in the first place (as systemd does using namespaces).

It works perfectly well with namespaces but you have to tell it to use them (it uses them for runlevels out of the box, but you need to tell the launch script if you want a process to be isolated). Though for that matter SysV does too.

It’s a system service manager, it being portable is not a requirement nor any benefit when BSD has nearly no traction in the desktop or server space other than a few cases.

> it being portable is not a requirement nor any benefit when BSD has nearly no traction in the desktop or server space other than a few cases.

Is your argument that portability is irrelevant because nothing but (systemd/)GNU/Linux matters, or that service manager in particular don't need to be portable?

Some complex applications are starting to require systemd components. So yes, portability may become important to the BSDs.

Which applications?

GNOME since more than 10 years

Gnome runs on OpenBSD so it clearly doesn't "require" systemd

gnome hard depends on systemd, so much that for it, *bsd (and any non-systemd unix-like) had to write a systemd-shim to emulate some functions of it, and/or gut some of systemd's components such as logind in to elogind

Not for a while now; accountsservice runs fine with cosolekit. I still don't understand why the broader Linux ecosystem burned the better part of a decade on the long-solved problem of "who is logged in to this TTY?", but whatever floats their boat...

BSD is used in a lot more than you think due to solid engineering and a non-viral commercial friendly license.