I see your point, and I find it interesting. I'm not convinced that it is Poettering's goal to build an easy workaround for the GPL, but I can see how someone trying to do that would follow the path of IPC. I would be interested to see if there is more evidence on this topic.

My point is, that's not necessarily enough. Something can still be a derivative work, even if it uses IPC.

Do you see how that's not actually a rebuttal? All he's said is, "it's not complex." But the criticisms are that it is more complex. He hasn't said anything to address the criticisms, except that he disagrees with them!

Does it really surprise you that he disagrees? I hope not.

I don't.

That's not a very good argument, I might as well say, "unless he's going to write code that's not crap, he's just a whiner." Woohoo, a point that makes no sense.

For specific, easy to see problems with the blog post, start by noticing that he actually agrees with many of the points that he calls myths. You don't even need to dig deep! The following are quotes from the actual post:

The main thing it needs to fall under GPL is to be a derivative work. That's a legal term, and as you mention, a grey area.

But merely using RPCs instead of linking isn't enough to keep it from being a derivative work: I'm sure you can think of ways a product could still be a derivative work.

If that interface isn't easily replaceable, you have a problem.

I think that's a feature

Well that right there shows that systemD is not modular and flexible

The leader of Norway is a king. One is not so quick to shoot a king, they are royalty, you see.

That hasn't been proven

This is understandable, but there are much, much simpler ways of achieving this goal than systemD.

One of the interesting things about systemD discussions. If you watch, people who criticize say things like, "that's an ugly hot mess of architecture!" People who support it answer by saying, "the features are so good!" You can see those two things are somewhat arguing past each other.

You captured both sides of the argument in a single post, so good job.