I was thinking about this comment, and I realized this is probably the source of most of your angst, which leaves some great solutions on the table.

systemd isn't really creating a much more significant break with the systems you like, because it's building on top of what Linux, which for the most part has already made the break.

The problem is, projects like GNOME, which have software you want to use, are integrating more tightly with Linux and specifically bits of systemd.

I think the obvious solution is a bridge/better interface. The contracts that GNOME is going to rely upon are at least going to be pretty well defined, and if you've got another system that works better, it shouldn't be hard for it to provide an equivalent, even compatible, interface.

If it really is demonstrably better, GNOME and other projects will likely adopt your interface/abstraction, and systemd will end up having to communicate through your interface. Even if they don't, it is a comparatively simpler effort for a software community to support a relatively small set of touch points that they want GNOME to be aware of, and maintaining a fork or compatibility layer is a perfectly reasonable solution (indeed, BSD already does this for Linux runtimes).

I can understand why it'd not be a perfect solution from your perspective, but if a bunch of developers contributing to a work you care about are going a direction you don't like, it's about as good an outcome as one could hope for.