> Always felt like Debian was stuck between “all in” or “go without”

Debian can be configured at installation to go ''all in'' with systemd or ''go without'' if you prefer. The latter option pretty well mooted the purpose of the Devuan spinoff. In the Bullseye version it is possible to change a running system from using systemd to sysvinit or OpenRC.

I agree about seeing how Debian reacts to how InitWare develops from alpha.

Interesting... here's a good writeup on one way to do it: https://lecorbeausvault.wordpress.com/2022/02/07/debian-swit...

The repo has had 3 commits in the last 4 years or so. I don't think it's going to get developed from alpha unless something suddenly changes.