Seriously, who gives a fuck about boot times? We're talking about about 5-15 seconds of difference. If you are rebooting everyday and you are not a kernel developer testing fresh kernels on bare metal - guess what? You you are doing it wrong! That few extra seconds you might gain isn't worth including the goddamn kitchen sink! You are free to not use it - bullshit! You know goddamn well enough it's in all of the distros now and is a hard dependency for several major components that cannot easily be uncoupled! Build your own alternative? Also bullshit. I'm not a Red Hat employee that's getting paid to do so and have to provide for my family which does not leave an opening to be a full-time developer of an alternative.
Wake up and smell the shit! We're all neck deep in it now...