What's stopping anyone from maintaining the ONE PURE SYSTEM-FREE DISTRO (tm)?

Nothing. Actions have shown that distro maintainers overwhelmingly prefer systemd because it's way easier to maintain than sysv init (from what I hear anyways). I'd put money on the author of the blog not being a distro maintainer - just some guy that complains on the internet.

Angry old man angry

Damn, You weren't kidding. the article would be comical if it weren't so worrying for his mental state.

There are plenty of Systemdless forks of distros. People do maintain and it works well. However, the issue is to make the forks its incredibly labor intensive for coders and while not impossible to remove systemd, it's extremely hard. When base apps require systemd, it locks you down to that one system which is why people hate it so much. It centralizes code and the systems and prevents ease of choice. Does it work? Yes. Though even if it doesn't affect you or your thoughts, its good to understand why there is a divide. I personally use Artix Linux at the moment with S6 as my init system and it works great. I get why people like Systemd, but I feel it sterilizes our freedom of choice like a frog in a pot of water.