Actually, it's possible for more than two things to be true at once. It could be:

1. It could be true sysv init sucked. (Actually, it wasn't that bad as a modular version of local.rc, but parallel and delayed startup was always just a kludge).

2. It could be true that systemd is a good init system. (For me it's a step change improvement sysv init for parallel and delayed start up. About my only complaint is you don't see failures on "systemctl start xxx"; you have to run journalctl.)

3. It could be that adding another 1M lines of code into the systemd source unrelated to starting stuff was an unsound engineering decision - almost inexplicable coming as it does from a senior engineer. Keeping things in separate source databases with explicit interfaces is a well understood way of reducing the chances of ending up with a ball of mud.

4. It could be that moving sending state changes via an RPC interface (dbus) so you have a million places you have to inspect to understand the state of the system and how it got there rather than writing the desired state of the system to disk with a journal where everyone can inspect it was a bad idea.