I think that's moving the goal posts a bit. Git is a VCS. You can replace some of git with RCS. More of it with CVS, or all of it with mercurial (modulus a few git corner cases). Git interfaces with email and diff/patch. It can produce text output that can be turned into reports with awk if you're so inclined.

I think arguing that systemd breaks with the unix philosophy is entirely valid -- it's taking what could (does!) arguably exist as separate systems with clean, separating interfaces into one monolithic whole for a somewhat unclear gain.

I wonder how hard it would be to write a compiler/translator from systemd service files to sysv init-scripts?