The problem is that key components are being "depreciated" by the Poettering crew for no better reason than "code elegance". Thus distros either have to take over maintainership a ever growing codebase, or accept the Poettering code wholesale.

One can really wonder what is going on when Gentoo opts for picking up maintainership while Debian, that has previously forked Firefox over trademark issues, does not (and Poettering etc are leaving snide remarks aimed at the Gentoo people for this "defiance").

One thing to keep in mind is the gorilla behind the curtains, Red Hat. Key devs of systemd etc are on their payroll...