According to that page "the main reason Alpine aims to replace" OpenRC is they want the init system to "interface with external events". Huh? The thing I like about OpenRC is is if I `grep -R socket` on its codebase then it comes up empty. Alpine seems to be leaning towards s6 according to that page, which appears to have a treasure trove of network services. Last thing I want is to wake up one morning after updating Alpine and have all these scampering daemons like skadnsd, s6-fdholderd, s6-sudod, s6-ipcserverd, s6-ftrigrd, s6lockd, and ucspilogd skulking in the background. Also the boldness of the name. If you name it System 6 then you're claiming you've built something better than Bell System V. The init process has total power over the rest of userspace. I'm sorry but I don't think your system administration paradigm that MiTMs DNS deserves to be /sbin/init. I just want a UNIX-like system with few opinions that stays out of the way.
Those last four s6-* programs are not daemons. They are chain loading programs that modify permissions or the environment then exec into the next program in the chain.
To be frank s6 and its cousins like runit have so much fewer lines of code -- I'm pretty sure it's fewer than OpenRC and traditional SysV both -- because of simple and thought-through architecture. If you're gonna do a systemd alternative at all, ever, it'd have to be on one of these sane foundations.
