I think it's clear he's talking about systemd when he says:

"You all presumably know why."

Plus, there is some interesting comments from Teodore Tso talking
about systemd in G+
https://plus.google.com/+TheodoreTso/posts/EJrEuxjR65J



On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 4:39 PM, Steve Litt <slitt@???>
wrote:

> What did Linux mean by "init"? A lot of people use the word "init"
> synonomously with sysvinit, in which case this would appear to be bad
> news for us. On the other hand, perhaps he use "init" to mean the init
> system, regardless of brand. I can't tell from context.
>
> SteveT
>
>
> On Mon, 10 Jul 2017 08:57:33 -0700
> Bruce Perens <bruce@???> wrote:
>
> > The entire paragraph is even more damning:
> >
> > And yes, a large part of this may be that I no longer feel like I can
> > trust "init" to do the sane thing. You all presumably know why.
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 7:20 AM, Emiliano Marini
> > <emilianomarini82@???
> > > wrote:
> >
> > > I no longer feel like I can
> > > trust "init"
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/7/6/577
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Dng mailing list
> > > Dng@???
> > > https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
> > >
> > >
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