systemd needs linux > 3.7, which excludes most ARM embedded hardware

" ”They” is perhaps a dozen people or so. In addition, the GR is not about jessie at all, and shouldn't impact the jessie release in any way other than by distracting attention from the upcoming freeze (which is annoying but probably not really a problem)"

Distractions for individuals working in the IT sector not only delay task completion and increase the number of bugs ( encase you are a developer ), but can also lead to increased stress and frustration levels, which can then lead to even more delays and in some cases, burnout for contributors.

And what you are basically saying if that is the case is that this stunt by Ian and his seconders was deliberately made to distract the community from it's work since it wont have any effect on Jessie hence could have waited until Jessie would have been released.

Something I personally would not take lightly and would immediately propose or insist that at some point in the development cycle GR's would be put on Freeze until after release to prevent misuse of the process and distracting people from doing their work.

"most of the packages in question have reasonable sysvinit scripts that we will be able to use with systemd in jessie even if they don't have native systemd unit files"

As I mentioned elsewhere dont hesitate to be in contact upstream if you need help with that migration since these kind of migration/integration work in distributions with systemd is beneficial to *all* so it does not take many resources from systemd community from every distro to lend a hand and help with that migration. ( It's better to get a crew already familiar with this rather then expecting each maintainer being able to put themselves into inner workings of systemd, they can always do so *after* the component shipped native systemd units ) It just requires a bit of organizing and packagers ( in all distros ) to be on stand by when that happens and it will be quickly over and integrated for *everybody* involved.