Phoronix: Using Udev Without Systemd Is Going To Become Harder
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTczNjI
Funtoo with eudev works very well for my purposes and so I have not dabbled with systemd. No doubt other distros and users are very happy with it.
I am ignorant to the politics and decision making around systemd and udev. It does seem to me disappointing that udev would be changed in such a way that it breaks functionality with non-systemd init daemons. If that is not "forcing distros to use systemd" then I don't know what is. -_-