> Contrast this with the "Poettering-approach" to Pulse Audio: klunky, specialized, complex, and ultimately broken

I am skeptical. PA had teething problems, but on the other hand, they kept compatibility with ALSA, they kept compatibility with ESD. /dev/dsp had been known-to-be-broken for ten years or so when PA was released- and after the kernel added the necessary bits, osspd was released.

The PulseAudio rollout was a disaster, but it wasn't architecture that was the problem.