Just my two cents as I haven't seen it mentioned in this thread:
launchd is the init system used by Mac OSX and has been ported to FreeBSD a few years ago with a recent resurgent effort for improvements [1]. It has been suggested that launchd could one day be the new FreeBSD init system due to speed and feature improvements, but many FreeBSD users think that the init system is a non-issue and efforts could be better spent elsewhere. launchd has also been criticized as to have been developed for OSX and not BSD (e.g. it depends on CoreFoundation features).
There is growing concern that applications will become more reliant on systemd and therefore Linux-only features [2], reducing or eliminating portability to the BSDs. Unfortunately, most conversations about init systems and FreeBSD degenerate into flame wars [3].
IIRC, when a presentation a few years ago at Chaos Communication Congress revealed systemd security issues, Lennart Poettering argued that these issues aren't a problem because they're resolved on Solaris and will be as soon as Linux gets some additional security mechanism. That sounded to me like systemd would also (theoretically) support Solaris.
Solaris had an init system like systemd for some years, called SMF. It was first released in 2005, the same year Apple released launchd.
It features service dependencies, log collection, fault detection and much more. One of the biggest differences is probably the usage of config files. SMF uses XML files to describe the service and its variables and a program called svcprop to edit variables and create new instances of the service. These can then be managed with svcadm.
I was aware of that, and it wasn't my point. I was talking about the supposed portability of systemd. The question remains, is systemd really Linux-only, or portable to some degree?
launchd is the init system used by Mac OSX and has been ported to FreeBSD a few years ago with a recent resurgent effort for improvements [1]. It has been suggested that launchd could one day be the new FreeBSD init system due to speed and feature improvements, but many FreeBSD users think that the init system is a non-issue and efforts could be better spent elsewhere. launchd has also been criticized as to have been developed for OSX and not BSD (e.g. it depends on CoreFoundation features).
There is growing concern that applications will become more reliant on systemd and therefore Linux-only features [2], reducing or eliminating portability to the BSDs. Unfortunately, most conversations about init systems and FreeBSD degenerate into flame wars [3].
[1]: https://github.com/rtyler/openlaunchd
[2]: http://people.debian.org/~stapelberg//2013/07/13/systemd-not...
[3]: http://forums.freebsd.org/viewtopic.php?t=35770