Had not seen your comment before adding mine but I think you're spot on. And having had to fight with openladp last week I can only agree with you. I used to know the "old" standard text file config and the new slap.d config style is confusing.
But I think it's comparable to systemd in that if you manage an LDAP directory day to day, the new system probably makes more sens once you're used to it.
We have to relearn the config and, man, sometimes we can be a lazy whiny bunch when we should try to evaluate systemd more objectively ;-)
As an aside, the survey pleased me as I expected more conservatism from Debian
I didn't mean the openldap config. Sometimes the daemon just plainly does not start. You basically have to resort to using strace to figure out what is wrong with the thing. Systemd redirects stderr and stdout, highly useful IMO.
Openldap gives difficult to debug starting problems in loads of cases. E.g. problem in a certificate, config problem, etc. Then you might want to increase the debugging level. Really not fun to look into some script and figure out what actually eventually is passed to the openldap daemon as arguments.
I have had my fair share of daemons not starting due to various problems. E.g. openldap (terribly confusing debug messages). Give me systemd any day over the complexity of a lot of those scripts.