Linux

It would seem my point is not getting through (ie. I must not have expressed it well enough).

You having freedom doesn't mean other people have a duty to support what you do - it just means they don't have legal ground to stop you.

For example, freedom of speech doesn't mean that newspaper must publish whatever you write - it just means the police won't come knocking on your door at 5am because you of something you wrote.

The "idea of linux" (by which I take you mean the idea of FOSS in general, not of the kernel specifically) isn't to support anything and everything.

Does dropping 32 bit go against the "idea of linux"? Does software being developed/tested only on specific distros go against it? Do devs that only supporting glibc because they don't care about musl go against the idea of linux?

I’m just expressing a concern where over relying on one init system will limit options

Nope, nothing actually limits the options of people who don't like systemd: if they want to run some FOSS piece of software whose upstream devs don't care about openrc (or whatever init of choice), they'll just have to fork the projects, put the work in, and the upstream devs won't be able to stop them in any way.

This is what the "freedom" in FOSS means. Twisting it to mean that upstream goes against "the idea of linux" if they don't support whatever thing you care about and they don't is entitled.

The only option limiter to ever exist in Linux is the amount of free time maintainers have and the effort they're willing to spend.

(This is a convoluted way to tell you that if you want more "anything" independence you should contribute)