But do they? Oxide targets the enterprise, and people there don't care that much about how the underlying OS works. It's been ten years since a RHEL release started using systemd and there has been no exodus to either Windows or Illumos.

I don't mean FUD in a disparaging sense, more like literal fear of the unknown causing people to be excessively cautious. I wouldn't have any problem with Oxide saying "we went for what we know best", there's no need to fake that so much more research went into a decision.