In February, following a vote by the same committee, it was decided that systemd, something that provides not only an init system but also controls various other aspects, would be the default in the next Debian release, Jessie.

The release is due to be frozen next month and released early next year.

Jackson's resolution is similar to one proposed in March. "This GR seeks to preserve the freedom of our users now to select an init system of their choice, and the project's freedom to select a different init system in the future," Jackson writes.

"It will avoid Debian becoming accidentally locked in to a particular init system (for example, because so much unrelated software has ended up depending on a particular init system that the burden of effort required to change init system becomes too great). A number of init systems exist, and it is clear that there is not yet broad consensus as to what the best init system might look like."

There has been a great of pushback after systemd actually began to be integrated. Systems that run the testing stream of Debian are already running systemd if they have been updated regularly.

In a related development, a group which says it comprises senior UNIX administrators is threatening to create a fork of Debian if the systemd adoption for Jessie goes through.

In a call to arms, this group says it wants to adopt alternatives to SysVinit - the default in Debian until the systemd vote was taken. However, the group has underlined that it does not wish to include init systems that conflict with the "basic design principles of 'do one thing and do it well' with a complex collection of dozens of tightly coupled binaries and opaque logs".