Perhaps you could benefit from reading what some of the people making these decisions have written on the topic.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=1729;bug=7...

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1149530#p1149530

Are you seriously saying that most distribution maintainers were happy with sysvinit?

For what is worth, all the Debian maintainers I know, even those who are not systemd supporters, felt that sysvinit had to go in a way or the other (eg. during the default init debate the options were systemd and Upstart, sysvint was doomed to be replaced and only kept as a compatibility option in any case.)