Not necessarily, but certainly not a bad time to again consider why it’s open and whether you really need it to be. Especially for people selling network-aware devices.

Also make sure you have the correct Intel module (there’s two or three, although some cards work with more than one) and check for missing firmware, in the event the card requires any. Should all be on the wiki page linked above.

And IBM could very easily sell them on, or the leadership there could change and decide to do something unpleasant (although I know IBM has a long history of being about as maneuverable as a parade float, it still could happen).

Gentoo is not exactly a systemd-less distribution—you do have the option of installing it instead of going with the default (OpenRC). Personally, though, my Linux use predates systemd and no one has ever presented what I would consider a compelling reason for me to switch to it, so I install all my systems with OpenRC. I’ve reached a stage in my life where I dislike unnecessary churn in utility software.

From a less-personal standpoint, I consider the philosophy behind systemd to be wrongheaded (as in, it looks very much like Microsoft’s embrace-extend-extinguish—and no, I do not trust Red Hat not to be sold to someone who will take advantage). Many of the other reasons-not-to-use given by others here also ring true to me.

From a health-of-the-Linux-ecosystem point of view, Gentoo developers seem more prone than those working for other distros to actually pay attention to things like broken build systems or test suites, and file bugs against them. This is especially the case for exotic arches that the developers of some software claim to support but don’t themselves build for (but it affects amd64 too).

But why they need to remove it?

Most likely maintainers are looking to reduce the maintenance burden produced by a feature that had very low uptake (assuming, as others are saying, that it’s only data journalling and not metadata journalling that’s being removed).