Quoting Simon Walter (simon@???):

> Did the Debian leadership do a poll to find out what their users
> wanted and who were their typical users?

To the based of my recollection, no.

To be clear, in the blog passage you quoted, Simon Richter (whoever _he_
is) _didn't assert_ that Debian Project's decision to use systemd as
default init for new installs of Debian 8 'Jessie' was based on any
belief that it 'is good for the vast majority of users'.

Actually, to the best of my understanding, it's something of a
misconception to claim that the Debian Project as a whole made such a
decision. It was a great deal more haphazard than that, a series of
blunders.

Around 2013, the GNOME packagers found that they could no longer rely on
ConsoleKit, because ConsoleKit had been EOLed. (Debian Project had an
existing practice of installing GNOME by default if you use Disk 1 and
go with defaults.) The GNOME packagers then switched to systemd-logind
to provide the 'multiseat' functionality ConsoleKit had been providing.
systemd-logind dragged in systemd as a dependency.

The point is that it was less a _decision_ in the way the matter arose
and blew up than it was a stepwise stumbling without a guiding plan.

I personally wish there _had_ been pondering of a guiding plan at this
point -- and that the Project had decided to dump GNOME, which would
have made the original problem go away. Unfortunately, that was not the
way the issue was framed. In bureaucracies, much depends on process,
process has momentum, and what gets started crucially influences what
happen later.

Various people realised what was happening and started arguing on
debian-devel at great length. A Debian developer named Paul Tagliamonte
responded to the contention by opening a bug against pseudo-package
'tech-ctte', which is a way of raising an issue with the Debian
Technical Committee, asking the Committee to 'Decide which init system
to default to in Debian'. A discussion of mind-numbing length ensued in
the bug; see https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=727708 .
(Beware of extreme length and lots of annoying verbal dogfighting.)
On Feb. 11, 2011, the Technical Committee decided:

We exercise our power to decide in cases of overlapping jurisdiction
(6.1.2) by asserting that the default init system for Linux
architectures in jessie should be systemd.

Should the project pass a General Resolution before the release of
"jessie" asserting a "position statement about issues of the day" on
init systems, that position replaces the outcome of this vote and is
adopted by the Technical Committee as its own decision.

This was after a complicated committee vote among these alternatives:
systemd, upstart, openrc, sysvinit (no change), and 'requires further
discussion'.

Ian Jackson later imposed a General Resolution, to the annoyance of most
Debian developers. Again, it was a complicated alternative vote among
several alternatives. As amended, one of the voteable options was to
state that no General Resolution was warranted. This option passed --
the voting developers essentially saying they were annoyed by Jackson's
maneouvering, and voted to essentially say 'No, go away.'

So, in short, no, the Debian leadership (the Project Leader and the
electorate) not only did no poll but explicitly decided to take no
action. The Technical Committee (a lower-level body) voted to not
revert a then-fait-accompli unplanned acceptance of systemd in Debian
8 'Jessie' that had barged into the system via GNOME. And, to the best
of my recollection, no other official action of any kind happened.

(Reminder: I'm an outsider to the Debian Project. I subscribe to the
debian-devel and debian-security mailing lists and mostly ignore the
former because of vastly excessive traffic -- but have no connection to
the project. I just use some of its software.)

-- 
Cheers,                                      "My life has a superb cast,
Rick Moen                                    but I cannot figure out the plot."
rick@???                                       -- Ashleigh Brilliant
McQ! (4x80)