... and give up the ability to easily run on any non-systemd system, like BSD, Solaris, OSX, older/embedded Linux distros, and basically any other Unix. Oh, and it's GPL'ed so most of those systems won't use it.
Requiring systemd is like saying every daemon program needs a GUI.
Who said anything about requiring systemd? All you have to do is handle it when it's there. It's no different than any other portability concern that has ever existed on any platform ever.
Et voila, you found your answer. Target systemd, problem solved.