Love or hate Pottering and his team, they're at least writing code instead of postulating on internet forums. systemd's adoption and popularity among many is proof of that
Love or hate internet discussion, you're always welcome to not participate in it.
They actually exist. Namely OpenRC and s6 as the main competitors to the core systemd functionality (init). There exist other alternative projects for the other components of systemd as well.
My complaint is that they are adding another tool that depends on their core software in an attempt to replace a portable, well established tool in a non-drop-in way.
This is a consistent pattern with systemd that feels very embrace-extend-extinguish-y and it does nothing but increase the cost involved in keeping code portable between different platforms.