From what I've seen the good intentions behind systemd were marred by the fact that when it was announced the (mostly skeptical) responses to it were met by systemd supporters who held the attitude 'we're saving nix, join us or nix dies', and this has created the current atmosphere of debate.
While these death threats and the like are in no doubt horrible, it seems that some bridges need to be built between the people who support systemd and those who do not, because the attitudes on both sides of the argument are rather poor, and this makes the open source community look even worse.
Edit: I said nothing about systemd users currently making threats, rather that their attitude at the beginning of the project at some level caused the response that we see today. They are not completely to blame, as are not the people who are against systemd and do not send death threats. Regardless, it seems that recently, HN only supports the idea of 'there is no gray, only black and white'. People like these are the reason why the systemd creators cannot engage in debate, because on both sides the people who shout the loudest win out over the reasonable voices.