Ubuntu was the originator of Upstart. They announced they were considering the switch about 2 years ago, announced the switch Feb 2014. So I don't know where you are getting 2 days.

AIX System Resource Controller
Solaris Service Management Facility
Linux had a bunch of cludgy systems like daemon tools.

Etc... So you don't know what you are talking about those things most certainly exist.

As for faster boot times ... your claim was what systemd does not one feature it had in 2010. Initial state during boot to running state with daemons states is just one of the states that systemd manages that most certainly is not the entirety or even the primary drivers of its functions.

Sovereign immunity applies to employees, congress hasn't waived it there. To go after them you would have to prove bad faith, illegal action, discrimination...

Systemd has been standard on distributions for about 2 years. There arrows are long past. Debian is a conservative distribution, they went when it was getting painful not to.

You are paranoid. The very first statement is wrong: There are no technical merits of systemd that are important or critical, just some convenience issues Nothing is critical. However in terms of important process management has been important for many years on many operating systems. It was part of most of the commercial Unixes and improved them considerably. So yes it is important.

As far as technical merits the technical merit is it does basic process management and thus allows for hooks to more advances process management.

Debian in so far as they picked either their issue was the license and that got resolves around 1999. KDE3 to 4 was never the cause of Debian tilting towards Gnome.

What do you mean by fair? From from the perspective of Jessie or fair from perspective of some broader Linux community? if you mean the formers: Debian can't control what upstream software producers do. If in 2016 an upstream package has no interest in fixing a security hole that only impacts sysv what are they going to do about it? They would then have to have a security update that could break init scripts.

As for how to handle upgrades on existing servers that have complex code I really don't have much of an opinion. Certainly systemd breaks stuff on existing servers as far as init scripts which is one of the reasons I think changing the default was important to do early before the forking between systemd-linux and sysv-linux got large enough that automated updating became unworkable. I assume basically that Debian wants updates to Jessie to be a lot like new installs and not have to support two systems in the field. So that end users understand version upgrades can break stuff, while minor updates don't. Knowing you are updating from 7 to 8 is the warning that breaking change could occur. And then they are moving them over to the new update.

As for 20 years disappearing overnight. Sort-of yes. The direction systemd is going towards is uniform process management like you see on mainframes and minis and away from the workstation process management that Unix uses. I think that's the right thing to do, but I'm not going to deny that in many ways the people who are supporting the systemd / IaaS / PaaS stacks are trying to put back into Unix the stuff that Ritchie, Thompson... were taking out.

The federal government has sovereign immunity. Congress has a to waive immunity otherwise they can't be sued.

No bigger fish are already doing that. The president of the United States has come out strongly for patent reform. The problem is:

a) Democrats in congress like legal fees
b) There are Republicans who believe intellectual property laws should be strengthened.

However there is light. Innovation Act (H.R. 9) is really good and bipartisan. It doesn't fix the system but it does make very good minor change and starts the process of congress getting this system under control. Essentially it tightens up the rules for an infringement filing so that it goes from allowing filing of the form

Product X infringes patent Y to requiring
Product X infringes patent Y by doing Z

You are just vastly decreasing the number of lawsuits. That might be a good reform. But essentially the burden on filing is so high and the costs so great that it would almost always (or possibly always) pay to resolve problems outside the justice system. Which means that structures that require lawsuits won't function. For example if debts aren't collectable the loan system collapses. The only way to get a loan would be a loan shark type investor who doesn't depend on the courts.

Your numbers need to be tweaked. 125% cap, liability for 100% of the amount sued for... too high. Something like a 300% cap and 10% liability and I'd agree with you.

Very good list of traits for a legal system.

I'd add to your list a requirement for
due diligence: a party should be encouraged to investigate claims on their own before making them in court.
rapid settlement: parties should be encouraged to make offers to one another in a timely matter
punishment for stalling:
encouragement towards truth telling: admitting flaws in your case rather than requiring the other party to prove them should always be to your advantage
reduced cost: the system should work to adjudicate matters of fact cheaply. The expenses should be reasonable relative to the amount of money at stake.

A company in the industry doesn't do enough due diligence to check whether X did infringe or not. I don't have any problem with them getting their head handed to them. You have an obligation in your filings to have very good reason for believing what you are saying is true, and that should be more than just your gut instinct.

Instead, the fees are based on fairness- if you file a frivolous suit, you can plan on being ordered to pay the defendant's costs

The problem is that the courts have a minimalist view of what is frivolous and don't require due diligence or good faith to avoid a claim of frivolousness. If the courts were more aggressive about whether initial fillings were in good faith this would be fine. The loser pays is based on the belief that judges are not going to rulle out huge classes of disputes from being judged even though our society can't afford justice to be cheap.

Better IMHO would be tiers with very different procedures (and thus costs) at each tier:
small claims: up to $20k
reduced claims $10-200k
standard: $100k - 5m
enhanced expectations: $2.5m+

As for admitting it is a problem... part of the problem with the USA in terms of good faith is not admitting something is almost always to your advantage. That's something the courts would want to discourage. Admitting a wrong should reduce the claim while failure to admit it should increase it. That encourages people towards settlement.

good luck trying to win a case against Microsoft or IBM or similar patent trolls

A patent troll is a company that doesn't sell goods or services based upon a patent but enforces patent rights. Microsoft and IBM both make their money from making stuff. They are not by any means patent trolls. Patent troll should be reserved for the companies that just buy up patents otherwise you turn an argument about particularly noxious entities into a more fringe argument about intellectual property.

Small wronged person who is sure they have a solid case which they can prove can now sue big corporation and because it is rarer is more likely to be believed
Small wrong person who has an iffy case can't sue.